Project Echo
by Lily Zen
Summary: AC 201. Preventer Heero Yuy is given an assignment to discover the activities of the group Ragnarok. He enlists the aid of his CI, Eris. But Eris has a secret... 01xOFC.
1. Part One

Project Echo

Part One

Author: Lily Zen

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Notes: Um…I hope you like this. I guess. Part one is basically giving you the background on Eris and getting you up to speed on what Project Echo was. Also the phrase 'the goddess threw the golden apple' is a reference to one version of how the Trojan War began. The goddess of chaos, Eris, took one of Hera's golden apples to a wedding she had not been invited to and tossed it into the crowd with a note saying it was for the fairest. Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena began to argue over who the fairest was. They decided to let the mortal Paris decide, and he collected bribery offers from each of them. Hera offered royal power, Athena offered wisdom, and Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Troy. Needless to say, Aphrodite won the contest, and because of the bargain he'd made with her, Paris was then obligated to steal Helen from her betrothed, Menelaus, thus igniting the Trojan War.

Also, a note about sword-fighting. Eris has the knowledge and mastery of many different fighting styles. However, she seems to prefer Iaido over some others. Iaido is the art that most samurai fought with in Feudal Japan. It involves the usage of a sheathed katana and each kata has four parts to it: the withdrawl, the cut, the removal of blood from the blade, and the return. However, the true goal of Iaido is to maintain a certain attitude of calm throughout and to keep the movements as fluid and fast as possible. One aspect of the art that I find most intriguing is how half the battle is fought entirely in the mind. The goal of Iaido is to use your blade only as a last resort. First, they try to psych their opponent out of even attacking them by the aforementioned "attitude." It kind of reminds me of gunfights in Wild Western movies. Another interesting aspect of Iaido is that you are expected to be able to attack from multiple angles, even crouching or sitting positions. If you get the chance, you should look up some demos on Youtube. It is quite a marvelous thing to watch. Finally, later on Eris will make reference to always carrying a concealed blade inside of a gothic-looking parasol (umbrella). To see an example of what this would look like, you should Youtube clips of Setsuka fighting from Soul Caliber IV. Her fighting style is listed as Iaido.

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing, nor do I own Dollhouse, which is where I stole the concept of Project Echo from. The song in italics is "Massacre" by Acrassicauda. They are pretty awesome, but I don't own them either.

* * *

_Years ago they created a new way to kill more innocents. _

_Children. Elders. Women. _

_Bombs fall like rain from the sky, filling rivers with innocent blood._

_Change your evolution._

_Enjoy your demolition._

_Massacre of a generation,_

_and death's bell is still ringing._

The year was AC 195. The sky was alight with the fires of war. Civil unrest dominated the Earth Sphere Alliance. The space colonies had finally grown sick of the treatment they received at the hands of the Alliance, among them a few who had once been OZ. This prompted five scientists, all of them ex-OZ, to build five massive battle suits known as Gundams, and send them to crashing to earth with their five pilots, mere teenage boys. Their targets were various strategic bases throughout the Alliance operated by the military faction OZ.

Later on, OZ would overthrow the Alliance entirely, backed by the power of old world nobility through the Romefeller Foundation, thus revealing its true colors to the world. Many other events would come to pass that year. It was a year of struggle and pain, chaos and bloodshed.

But at the time on that hot August day in Neo-Tokyo, Jemma wasn't thinking of any of that. She was wondering when her host was going to get out of the shower. Sure, he'd already paid, but…and there her mind drew a blank. She couldn't remember why it was important he came out of the shower before she left; only that he did. Strangely, that little hole in her memory did not give the girl a moment's pause. Her brain simply glossed over it as she clicked idly through the television channels, most of which showed her nothing but images of the current attacks of Alliance bases. Jemma wasn't particularly interested in these, thinking that until it was on her doorstep it was hardly her problem.

Jemma was a beautiful girl, but not the brightest and definitely not the most ambitious. Her dominant characteristics seemed to be her charming personality and her frivolousness. Though no one knew how she'd become an escort, including Jemma herself, those personality traits made her quite good at it, not to mention her supple teenage body, long blonde hair, light and ashy, not at all like the wheaten blonde hair of Relena Darlian, and those pale violet eyes. She had been born naturally with a slight albinism defect. It wasn't enough to give her the telltale pinkish-red eyes and colorless hair and skin, but it had given her considerably lighter coloration than most.

Her client finally emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. Jemma smiled at him and clicked off the T.V. She stood up and just as she was about to move towards the Lieutenant Colonel, smiled apologetically. "Please excuse me a moment," Jemma demurred, and answered the phone. Only the agency had that number, so she didn't need to check the screen. "Hello?"

"The goddess threw the golden apple and thus the war began."

_They want to kill_

_the rest of you._

_They came for me, _

_but we're much stronger._

_They start the war and we pay the dues._

_No, we won't fight any longer._

_Dreams of change—_

_evolution._

_To see you die—_

_demolition._

_A demolition._

If anyone had been watching Jemma in that moment, they would have seen her eyes dilate, her breath stop and restart. When she was breathing again, the girl merely stated, "I understand," and hung up the phone.

"What was that about?" The Lieutenant Colonel was smiling, standing at the mini-bar and trying to decide what expensive little alcohol he was going to drink.

To his utter shock, he received no answer, merely an abrupt pressure on his neck. Jemma, whose code name was in fact Eris stood behind him, one leg braced against his body, the other slightly behind her. She had the tie from her hotel-provided robe in her hands, pulled taut across his windpipe. It took so little pressure to kill that way. Granted, it took a certain measure of time, but she really didn't mind.

Her pretty rosebud mouth, plump and swollen from kissing and sucking, curved up in a cold smile, and her violet eyes showed nothing of humanity in them.

_They've got the power_

_to control my fate._

_I'd rather die_

_than disintegrate._

_And I will fight_

_until the end of this._

_Just set me free_

_and let me breathe._

_One step to the victory,_

_one step to the death._

**AC 174**

"As you can see," Dr J was saying, "With this technology, we could theoretically re-program our soldier's brains in moments. Imagine the possibilities! It would take seconds to make an average fighter into a black belt in six different styles. You could upload fluency in any and all languages! If you wanted to, you could create an entirely new person!"

The board of directors thought this program skirted the edge of the ethical gray area they often worked in and lingered too much in the area of inhumane. The project was shelved. One year later, Dr J and his constituents left the services of OZ after the pacifist leader of the space colonies, Heero Yuy, was assassinated.

_My child is crying._

_My child is starving._

_His mother's heart_

_inside is burning._

**AC 189**

An ambitious young officer, eager to prove himself, unearthed the plans for Project Echo and presented it to General Dermail, the head of OZ at the time, who approved the project's testing phase. A prototype was developed. The first tests were unsuccessful or unstable. Doctor Emil Darnassus became assigned to head up the project. Under his direction, they were finally able to perfect Project Echo.

What no one was aware of was that Project Echo was designed to work in conjunction with the Zero System. Doctor J had known that his plans for the Zero System were highly unstable and could very easily turn on the user of such a delicate instrument, therefore his mind led him to the obvious conclusion: that in order to use Zero, one must create a wielder whose mind was as fine-tuned as the machine itself. Thus, Echo was drafted up. However, when Doctor J fled OZ during After Colony 175, none of those weapons projects were initiated.

The irony of all ironies was that Doctor J, being somewhat of a mad scientist, never denoted in his plans that Project Echo and the Zero System were linked in any way. Like most people, he kept records in a haphazard style, assuming he would be the only one to ever see them. So when J left, he left those pieces of his work behind, because surely no one would take any interest in the scribblings of an excommunicated associate, nor be able to make any sense of it.

Sadly, Doctor Darnassus was a persistent and brilliant man. After long hours spent poring over those haphazard records, he was able to draw up functioning plans of his own.

A young girl, orphaned in the last war, was chosen as their first human subject. Her given name was never recorded to save them in the case of legalities. Her mind was wiped clean by the program, and a dumbed-down basic platform installed, code named Eris. This was the basis to which all of those new personalities, or programs, as they were officially called, would then be installed. At first it was just little tweaks, tiny touches to make her more knowledgeable or more personable. It wasn't until later that they installed brand new people into the girl.

With each assignment, the orphan retained less and less of who she had been. She became merely a tool, an instrument for them. Project Echo was promising to be worth every penny it had cost.

_They stole my land._

_They stole my home._

_They ripped my flesh,_

_and stripped my bone. _

**AC 195**

Eris woke up cold and stared at the cracked ceiling of a bunker, confused about where she was, who she was. She remembered killing the Lieutenant Colonel, her blood quickening with equal parts excitement and silent horror. Then after…after he was gone, two men came in the hotel room. One of them had a gun, but he hadn't pointed it anywhere, merely held it in his hand. The other one smiled and said something—Eris couldn't remember what—and Eris docilely put her hand in his and let him lead her out of the room in nothing but the open hotel robe. Or was it Jemma who had done that? And who was Jemma?

She felt vaguely ashamed that she had been walking through the halls wearing nothing but that, and wondered what had happened to her clothes. In some distant part of her mind, Eris was able to make sense of the fact that she was both Eris and Jemma, but more Eris. However, she could feel Jemma's thoughts sliding around in her head, a slightly different shade than her own, like pulling on a pair of tinted sunglasses.

Then she remembered a long ride in a van, which ended at a military base, and a short walk to a small laboratory in the basement of one of the buildings. There she was sat in a chair and a small shot was given to her. After, the man in the basement, some kind of doctor, slid a strange visor over her eyes. It was similar to a pair of VR goggles, the kind where the game played on the inside of the lenses. She remembered pain then, though it was a distant thing, and a light that flickered beaming directly into her eyes.

Voices rose in panic and she assumed something had gone wrong. Then Eris was examined thoroughly, but deemed fine and sent to bed in a small box-like room, almost a cell.

Except she wasn't fine.

Eris should have been a blank slate, but instead…instead flashes kept washing over her, scattered emotions, abnormal thoughts. She should probably tell someone, but to be truthful, she enjoyed it. The anomalies were better than the nothingness she normally was. So she stayed silent and went through the motions of eating, training, and grooming with the secret knowledge that she was different now.

Months passed and with each upload, each download, Eris collected more and more pieces of…herself? There were many selves, but now they all became attached to the core, that first basic program the doctor had installed. As the war went on and Eris killed and sabotaged and seduced, she grew; grew enough to begin having thoughts, ideas, opinions. Eris kept them to herself because she knew that if she told, she might become obsolete.

Then she overheard one day that the testing phase of Project Echo was completed, and that they were ready to start the mass-production of bio-weapon systems. Eris was, at the point, smarter than most of the people who took care of her. She knew enough to deduce that 'bio-weapons' meant her and she was the 'testing phase,' which meant that they were about to take more people and wipe them clean like they had her. To Eris, who did not even remember having been anyone before being Eris, this was not acceptable. She didn't like the bleakness that her former existence had been, and found her new self more preferable. She assumed that those people felt the same about their personalities.

After in intensive few days of thought and planning, Eris decided to take action. Three AM was the time of day that a human's natural bio-rhythms were at their lowest. It was at this time that most personnel would be asleep, and those that were awake would be slower to react. She picked the lock on her cell and slipped out, her bare feet making no sound on the floor. In her hands, she grasped a fork tightly, something she had stolen off the lunch tray. The guards monitored Eris carefully when she was put through weapons training, so that there was never any opportunity to stash a weapon. The fork was the best she could do.

The night guard would be making his rounds. Eris flattened her body against the wall, two feet away from the corner where the hall connected to her living quarters. She didn't have to wait very long until he came. The girl took him by surprise, darting in close fast, wrapping a hand in his uniform to sling-shot him through the open door to her tiny room.

"Wha—"

The guard was cut off as Eris sprang up in an impressive show of gymnastics and clamped her knees on either side of his head. For that brief instant, her muscles strained and gravity tried to tug her down, but she persevered, wrenching herself and the man's head to one side. His neck broke with a sickening crunch and as his body began to flop lifelessly to the floor, Eris jumped off, landing on the balls of her feet lightly.

It was good that she hadn't been forced to use the fork. The tines weren't sharp, and it was a small thing. Eris could use it to take out someone's eye in a fight or by use of enough force, stab their carotid artery. Overall, it was not an efficient weapon.

With steady hands, she stripped the guard of his uniform and donned it herself, using his belt to cinch the pants tightly. The jacket was big on her also, and she had to compromise the added safety of having a layer of thick cloth between her and a weapon by rolling up the sleeves. The guard's gun was a large .45 semi-automatic. Her hands had to work a little harder to grip the handgun—Eris preferred a 9mm—but she had extensive training with all firearms and could make do. Sadly, in guerilla warfare that was often the only choice one had. The man also had a sword on his belt, which was convenient for Eris. She liked bladed weapons especially for discreet kills. It was not as elaborate as one of the high-ranking officer's swords, but the blade was sharp enough for use.

Dragging the man out of sight, Eris once more emerged from the room, closed the door carefully, and set off down the hall. There were two guards between her quarters and the lab now. Very lax security. The dead guard's key card was enough to let her through the first heavy, sliding door.

The lighting in the new hallway was much brighter, and there were many corridors connecting off of that one. She needed to move quickly. Staying as low as possible, Eris darted through the hall. There was a desk just at the end, tucked into the front corner of the room, which would be manned; the security monitoring desk. Its front was parallel to the hallway, so that whoever sat behind it had a good view of anyone coming towards it and the tactical advantage of having their back against a wall and approximately a yard away from a possible escape route down another corridor. A few feet away from the tunnel's end Eris dropped even lower, put her back against the wall and soundlessly slid. She was going for stealth, knowing that there was an alarm at the desk.

With her first careful footstep into the room, Eris almost lost her balance. There was a two inch spacial discrepancy between the corridor's wall and the front of the desk. In her tension, she had nearly forgotten that detail. A fall would have given away her approach, and so she steadied herself as best she could in her awkward position, frozen in a stance that could almost be described as a crab-walk. She didn't breathe. She didn't move. She just listened for the man behind the desk.

After a few moments of tense silence wherein all the guard did was yawn once, shift in his chair, and idly click a computer mouse, Eris stretched back once more, placing her back against the desk, keeping her eyes open for movement in any of the hallways while she trusted her other senses to guide her around the desk.

The crucial moment came as she scooted around a sharp edge. Knowing she had only once chance, Eris gathered herself, letting the tension in her back muscles flow into her legs, readying herself to spring from her awkward crouch. The guard sighed again, and as he did so, the blonde woman heaved herself upright and spun. In the same moment, she gripped the sheath strapped to her left side and reached across her body with her right hand. It came free with a soft, wet-sounding slide—there must have been velvet or some other material lining it—and slit the man's throat in the same beautiful, deadly motion. As he fell to the floor, gurgling, surprise still in his eyes, Eris flicked her blade to the side, the blood which had accumulated on it splashing the wall. Then with a subtle adjustment of her wrist, she replaced the cleaned blade in its scabbard.

"Sorry for this," she whispered as she watched the man's last breath curdle out of him. With her hands free, she leaned over the corpse and took over the computer system, hacking into the security locks. She input the correct commands to unlock the laboratory. Then she ran down the hall behind the desk. One guard remained between Eris and the lab, pacing the hallway the lab's door opened to. The lights there weren't as bright, but that made no difference to Eris. The guard had his back turned to her, probably investigating the green light on the lab's door, as she came at him at a dead run. With speed that some Iaido masters would envy, Eris drew her blade, still running, though she aimed for a spot next to the man instead of at him. The sword gashed open his side as she ran past, skidded to a stop, flicked her blade to eviscerate him, and plunged the sword straight through his neck just as he was about to scream.

He was dead before he hit the ground. Again, Eris used a practiced motion to remove the blood from the weapon and put it away. The unlocked door beckoned. Using the skills OZ had granted her, she erased all the data on the computer systems, destroyed the chair and headset, and all the little drives with their many personalities on them. All except one.

The computer-printed label on the drive read 'Test Subject 001: Original.' She assumed that on that driver, there existed a nine year old girl whose name was never recorded. Eris thought about destroying it. The personality of a nine year old was of no use to Eris in her hardened sixteen-year old body. Besides, the tech to upload her was utterly demolished. It was illogical to keep it.

In a sudden show of sentimentality, despite all of her logical arguments, Eris tucked the driver into her jacket.

She had one more stop to make before she could purge the site of any evidence. There were no guards stationed between the lab and Doctor Darnassus' suite. He had wanted to be close to the lab, and so it was just a short trip down the hall and around the corner. With sure hands, Eris pried off the cover to the locking mechanism, and stripped the wires. It was similar to hotwiring a vehicle. Eventually, a spark was produced, short-circuiting the lock on the door, which slid open with a soft whooshing noise.

The doc was a heavy sleeper, and he didn't stir which was good and bad all at once. Eris wanted him awake. She wanted him afraid; wanted him to see his death in her eyes as she killed him. A push of a button inside the door closed it once again, and the blonde girl took her time strolling over to the bed, perching next to him on the mattress.

Emil Darnassus had probably been a good-looking man in his youth, but he had not aged particularly well. His dark face was heavily wrinkled, his skin sallow from having spent so much time on base those last few years. He had high cheekbones that had probably given him a regal look when combined with his strong jaw. Her pale fingers made for an interesting contrast as they flitted over one of his cheeks and down that devastating jaw. Darnassus woke up then in a rush, not used to being touched after the death of his wife, and Eris smiled as he focused in on her. Confusion dominated his features at first, and then began to be eclipsed by overwhelming fear and comprehension. His little pet had slipped its leash.

"Don't move," Eris warned, "Don't scream."

"Eris," he tried, speaking quietly but firmly, "You shouldn't have left your room. You need your rest for tomorrow." The doctor still thought he could gain control of this situation, but he didn't realize that Eris had already marked him off as dead in her mind.

"No," the girl replied, "You need to rest." Then without any further warning, and with an inward ululation of happiness, her other hand which had been resting unobtrusively on his pillow gripped and pulled. His head hit the mattress and he spent a moment trying to flail. Eris pressed the pillow over his face with both hands and pressed down. When he began moving, trying to throw her off, Eris maneuvered herself so that she was straddling his body, forcing him still with her own weight.

A long time after he stopped moving, Eris finally let up. She gently lifted his limp, unresisting head and slid the pillow back underneath, and took a moment to close his unseeing eyes.

Getting to the locker where they kept the weapons was harder, but Eris liked a challenge. Then, with several blocks of plastique explosives clutched to her chest and more than a few detonators, Eris made sure no one would ever recover anything from that lab or that building. The bombs went off three minutes after she got out of the building without raising an alarm.

From her position of relative safety in the woods, she could see people on the base frantically running to and fro, trying to put out the fires and formulate a tactical response in the event that this was a Gundam attack. Eventually they would organize search parties of the surrounding areas in the Leos and Aries, but Eris was fast and smart. She was long gone before they ever got close, racing away on a hot-wired dirt bike.

The girl drove all night and well into the next day, getting as far as she could while she was riding the waves of victory. No one would ever make more mindless dolls like her. There would never be another nine year old girl lost to the pages of history, her name forgotten. There would never be a Test Subject 002. That was enough of a victory for her.

Then she disappeared, leaving the rest of the war to be fought by the stupidly brave.

_Dreams of change—_

_evolution._

_Just to see you die—_

_demolition._

_

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_

TBC…


	2. Part Two

Project Echo

Part Two

Author: Lily Zen

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Notes: Ragnarok is the Norse equivalent of Armageddon.

…So, one day, a few weeks back I decided to re-watch all of Gundam Wing to ascertain if it was as awesome as I remember (it was better—there's a lot of nuance in GW that escapes the mind of an adolescent girl). Then I couldn't get enough of it and I started reading Gundam Wing fanfiction. After that, I found myself wondering about what kind of woman Heero Yuy would go for—in most fanfiction it seems that all the pilots are gay; while this makes for some interesting love scenes, it is highly unlikely in a statistical sense as only one out of five men are homosexual—and so…this came out of that. This part is very, very short and is basically used to introduce Heero, outline his life, and ascertain his relationship to Eris. From a plot stand-point, it is mainly filler, but provides necessary background information. Also, I am prone to long author notes, for which I apologize. Finally, I realize that to some people Heero might seem a bit out of character in this fic. That is for a reason. One, I do not believe that Heero is a "cold" as he is portrayed in the world of fanfiction. This is an over-simplified version of his character in the series. Two, I have decided to give myself lee-way as this is a twenty-one year old version of him during peace-time, not a fifteen year old child-soldier whose only purpose is to fight and die in war. I believe that during this time, a considerable amount of change would have occurred in him. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Heero Yuy will ever be a white-picket-fence kind of guy, but then Eris isn't that kind of girl either.

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing doesn't belong to me, nor does Dollhouse. The song I've used this chapter is "Change (In The House of Flies)" by the Deftones. In case you are wondering exactly what the purpose is of these song lyrics, well, I included them as sort of…scene-breakers, and chose a particular song because that is what I used to inspire my mood during the writing of these chapters.

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_I watched you change  
into a fly.  
I looked away.  
You were on fire.  
I watched a change in you.  
It's like you never had wings.  
Now you feel so alive.  
I've watched you change._

AC 201

Heero Yuy smiled at the lens of the digital camera, after much provocation from one Duo Maxwell, who just wouldn't take no for an answer, the physical motion still not quite reaching his eyes. The camera tech, some new Preventer recruit whose name Heero wasn't familiar with, was merely happy he'd come in to take his new ID picture. Heero's old one had been an image from when he was seventeen, which didn't bother him one bit, except for the fact that it had gone through the washing machine one too many times and finally cracked irreparably.

Then again, it would be nice to actually look like himself on his ID. That would stop people from staring unnecessarily long, trying to imagine a younger version of himself. He hadn't changed too drastically since then, but it was enough that people questioned him. His hair was still brown and messy, though a little shorter than it had been on top, his eyes were still blue with their Asian slant, and his face was still rather fine-boned. However, his height now topped out near five-foot-ten, and he was broad-shouldered and slim-waisted, a far cry from the boy he'd been when he fell to earth those long years ago. Sally often remarked that it was a shame he was so good looking.

"I could hook you up with a million first dates, Heero, and I can almost guarantee they'd end well, if you know what I mean." Heero had discovered over the years that Agent Po had a rather strong streak of sexual perversion in her that was almost at odds with the focused woman he had first met during the war. Peacetime changed people though, or rather it allowed them to relax their defenses and enjoy the more frivolous parts of life. "It doesn't even matter that sometimes your personality is just…abysmal. You're so hot, it wouldn't even matter what you talked about. So what do you say?" Heero had looked at Sally blankly, hopped off the exam table, and went to pull on his uniform, completely ignoring her in lieu of a verbal response.

Heero always declined. Granted, he was twenty-one, he'd been with a few people by then—he'd found that even he was not exempt to the human weakness that was lust and given into it quite reluctantly when Duo had commented, idly, that he was even grouchier than usual approximately a year and a half after the first war. He had gotten better at being around people not of his intellectual caliber. He just wasn't inclined to see anyone on a consistent basis. A long time ago, Heero had devoted himself to the idea of Peace, being one of the few who would actively work to protect such a fragile concept, and he had no intention of slacking off. Relationships were a distraction.

Duo was still chuckling, possibly at his unnatural looking grin, even when Heero walked over to him and scowled. "Come on, let's go." His good friend and one-time comrade was fingering his visitor's badge, and he nodded slowly. "Yeah, I guess," Duo drawled, though Heero knew he really did agree, "Better go see what bug crawled up Une's ass this time. I hope she's not going to give me another 'I could arrest you for smuggling' lecture."

"Hn," Heero shrugged and they headed toward the elevators, automatically falling into a matching stride.

"I mean, it's not like I'm carrying bad stuff or anything," Duo defended himself, "Just, you know, stuff for the orphanages that they'd have trouble getting otherwise." After the war, Duo had, for the most part, gone his own way. Une had tried to recruit him multiple times for the Preventers, and he had finally accepted status as a part-time field agent. Basically that meant he was only supposed to be called in under extreme circumstances. He liked his life after the war though. The braided pilot tended to bounce back and forth between the colonies and visiting his buddies on earth. When he wasn't hanging out with Hilde at the salvage yard, Duo shuttled goods into various orphanages in the colonies.

"She knows," Heero assured his friend as he hit the up arrow.

Duo pantomimed wiping sweat from his brow with a silly grin. "Whew, that's a relief. But then why do you think she keeps bugging me about it?"

They stepped onto the elevator while Heero said matter-of-factly, "Because you keep giving in."

"Oh." Duo looked crestfallen for just a moment, but as always, he bounced back fast, "So you think next time I should tell her where to stick it, yeah?"

At that point, Heero couldn't help but to smirk. "I wouldn't tell her where to stick anything. You might be giving her ideas." He glanced at Duo wryly, then let his eyes coolly drift down to Duo's ass, willing his friend to get the joke. Of course, once Duo did, he winced and patted his own butt. "Ouch, gotcha. Okay, yeah, bad idea."

They got off at the top floor and walked to the double doors at the end of the hallway. A cursory knock, and they stepped into Trowa's office. The pilots exchanged greetings, and Trowa picked up the phone and dialed into Une's office.

Trowa had risen fast through the ranks of the Preventers, joining in the early days of the organization like Heero. However, unlike Heero, Trowa had a knack with people. His skills as a mercenary, particularly espionage, had translated well into the world of organized law enforcement. Two years ago, Une had finally asked Trowa to be her personal aide. Her second in command.

He seemed to be happy in the position, and for some reason that was important to Heero, so he ignored the fact that Trowa had turned brass on him and now frequently chewed him out for his lax attitude towards 'necessary' paperwork.

"Go on in. Wufei's already there," Trowa told them when he hung up the phone.

"I thought Chang was on leave," Heero replied, not moving an inch even though Duo had turned to head in. He paused at the other man's words.

Trowa shrugged. "She wanted him here, so he's here."

Heero inclined his head in acceptance of this fact, then headed through the next set of doors with Maxwell.

"Ah, there you are," Une stated before they were even fully in the room. Her hands flicked to indicate the three chairs, one of them occupied, in front of her elegant cherry wood desk. "Please have a seat."

Wufei nodded his greetings to Duo and Heero as they sat, and Heero commented, "It is good to see you up, Chang." Wufei had been Heero's partner in the field for four years, having requested the switch when Sally decided she was going to leave the fieldwork division for a position as the head of the Preventer Health Clinic. It was a fairly small clinic, mainly used for treating the kind of wounds some of their employees received out in the field (a lot of men were leery about the security of the public hospitals), but still a huge promotion. The switch turned out to be beneficial, as the two men had prior experience working together during the war, were similar minded in terms of dedication to their mission, and neither one minded the other's shortcomings (those being Wufei's temper, and Heero's quietness).

The last time Heero had seen Wufei, his partner had been at the clinic, having fractured his radius. He was arguing with Sally about being kept overnight, but the blonde woman was insistent as he also had a concussion. Of course, Wufei had been forced to take time off for his injuries, so Heero wondered idly why he was present in Une's office.

For his part, the Chinese man was sitting quite calmly, his arm cast a rough contrast to his traditional clothes, looking for all the world like it was perfectly normal for him to show up to work in what amounted to his pajamas.

"Thank you for coming, Duo," Une gave the braided ex-pilot a wan smile as she sat down, taking a healthy gulp of coffee as she did so. Few people knew it, but she was quite the crab until she'd had at least four cups. "I suppose you're wondering what's going on. I've been getting snippets of some intel that could prove to be highly disturbing. There's this group…organization, maybe. We're not sure how organized they are yet. Anyway, they call themselves…uh…."

She paused, opening a file on her computer. It was clearly not a good morning for the Commander of the Preventers if she couldn't even remember a silly detail like a name. "Ragnarok. We've been hearing chatter that they are taking their commitment to anarchy beyond the theoretical. There may be arms manufacture going on here, but they're secretive. Normally, I'd send Trowa, but with the ESUN Summit coming up, I really can't spare him. That's where you come in, Duo. I'd like you to infiltrate the group at their Oslo branch. Ragnarok originated there, so we feel that this would be the best place to begin looking into things.

"Normally, I wouldn't brief so many agents at once," Une admitted, "But this chatter alarms me. Yuy, I want you to see if you can pick up anything about Ragnarok here in Brussels. You've got CI's who may be of use, right? I also want you to set up a secure e-mail so that Duo can keep you abreast of his investigation. Chang, sorry to bring you in on this, I know you're still recovering—"

Wufei made a quick hand gesture with his uninjured arm, indicating that it was not an inconvenience. He really was quite dedicated to his job.

"Regardless," Une continued, "I wanted you read in on this since you and Yuy are partners. This may end up being a long-term investigation, and I want you to be aware of how it is proceeding. I wouldn't want you to be caught unawares upon your return to active duty."

"Very thoughtful of you," Wufei commented.

Duo raised his hand, looking uncertain.

"Yes?" Une quirked a brow at him in question.

"Oslo's in Norway, right?"

"Yes."

Crestfallen, the ex-pilot grumbled under his breath, "Couldn't be in the Bahamas, could they? Damn terrorists."

"Any other questions?" Their superior asked. After a beat, she continued, "I'll have the details on your desk before lunch, Yuy. Chang, go home, rest up so you can come back to work quickly. Dismissed."

_I took you home;  
set you on the glass.  
I pulled off your wings,  
then I laughed.  
I watched a change in you.  
It's like you never had wings.  
Now you feel so alive.  
I've watched you change._

_It's like you never had wings…_

The rest of the morning was rather uneventful. Duo made a nuisance of himself, sitting at Wufei's empty desk and entertaining himself with the office supplies. Heero spent the time actually working on some of his other cases. Contrary to popular belief, it was a rare that an agent concentrated on only one case at a time. Between Wufei and Heero, they often had up to twenty (or more) open cases at a time.

Then lunch rolled around and he stood up, stretching. "Come on," he said, grabbing his uniform jacket from where it had been hanging on the back of the chair, "Let's go grab some lunch."

"Awesome!" Duo shot out of his seat, "I've been dying to say hi to Irene."

"We're not going to the cafeteria." The dark haired man made a bee-line to the elevators.

"Oh…" Lengthening his stride, Duo caught up with Heero, "So where we going?"

"…Buffet."

"Buffet?"

Heero gave his friend a look that stated 'you heard me' better than words ever could. They stepped onto the elevator and rode it down to the third floor, where they took the skywalk over to the parking garage. For Duo's visit, Heero had borrowed one of the company cars rather than forcing his friend to ride bitch on his motorcycle. When they drove out of the nice, government sector of town and kept driving, Duo began to wonder where it was they were really going. Heero wasn't the type to be finicky about food, nor was he one to over-eat. Then the buildings around them began to get more decrepit looking until his friend pulled into a parking lot and turned off the engine.

"_Caged Exotics Show Lounge?_" Duo read, then turned wide eyes to his friend, "We're gonna eat lunch at a strip joint? Is that even sanitary?"

In response, Heero turned to his friend and deadpanned, "Don't be a pussy."

"Ah, god, Heero," they clambered out of the car, Duo still talking, "Buddy, I don't know about you, but eating is the last thing on my mind, watching those girls shake their stuff."

Heero left his jacket in the car, not wanting to get identified as law enforcement in this place and headed for the door. He ignored Duo, who seemed set on complaining.

"—I mean, you said lunch, so I thought you meant actual lunch. Jeez, man, why can't you ever do anything normal?"

"Eat. Don't eat. I don't care," Heero finally cut his friend off just as he pulled open the door. Their ID's got checked at the bar where an older man was working. There were a surprising number of people present, it being the middle of the day and all, and that place being a strip club, and a black woman dancing on the main stage. Then a strange thing occurred—the switch was strange to see, especially for Duo who was used to seeing Heero's indifferent façade, as Heero pasted on a public persona of being nice and approachable. He smiled at the waitress on staff and led Duo to a table with a good view of the stage, but not so near the other customers.

The place had a gothic S&M vibe to it, with actual cages for the dancers set up at strategic points. The girls tended to dress in a lot of leather and PVC. At night, the floor was smoky, the lighting an incongruous mix of romantic and dance-club that shouldn't have worked but did. However, during the day, they kept the annoying colored lights to a minimum and turned the fog machines off.

Heero ordered a soda from the waitress, so Duo did the same. Then the stoic young man smiled, really smiled, as he caught sight of something over his friend's shoulder. He lifted his hand in a wave, and then Duo heard the telltale sound of heels on the floor. "Hey," a woman said, coming up behind them and around to face them both.

She was of average height, topping out around five-six, he estimated, with long, ashy blonde hair, an easy smile, and light colored eyes. Duo couldn't be sure in the dim lighting of the exact shade. She wore a skintight black tank top, and an under-bust corset made of black PVC. Her short-shorts and over the knee boots matched the corset, but she wasn't dressed scantily enough to be a dancer. In fact, the way she stood straight up with her shoulders back in a move of utter confidence and poise, but with one hip cocked and a fist balled up on it screamed 'touch me and die.' The spiked bracelets on her arms helped too.

"What's up, man? Who's your friend?" The girl waved her fingers in Duo's direction.

"Eris, this is Duo. Duo, Eris," Heero took care of the formalities with perfunctory politeness.

Eris leaned down a little and offered her hand. "It's nice to meet you, Duo. Like he said, I'm Eris. I tend bar here, so can I convince you to order a top shelf cocktail?" She grinned charmingly and withdrew her hand after they shook. Duo laughed, finding himself rather amused by the girl's honest approach to thievery. "Sorry, I can't. Gotta go back to work," he explained.

"Shucks," she snapped her fingers, "Well, can I at least convince you to leave an excessive tip for your soda?" Another unapologetic grin made its appearance. He couldn't help but to laugh, finding himself even more charmed than before. Eris lifted one shoulder in a lazy 'never hurts to try' shrug and helped herself to a seat at the vacant table near Heero's elbow. She waved over one of the few dancers working that early in the day.

The other girl was pretty in that Irish girl sort of way, though her red hair obviously came from a bottle. "Hey, Harley, how's it going, babe?" Eris asked coolly.

Harley shrugged, her hips moving to the music on auto-pilot. "Slow," then she smiled, "But it'll pick up. Sierra totally owes me one for taking this shift."

Eris nudged Heero none-too-discreetly. "Buy your friend a dance, hot-stuff."

Harley was chuckling to herself, having obviously caught the exchange, and was unsurprised when Heero just looked up and stated, "You heard her." The redhead laughed and turned her attention to Duo, who soon found himself fully absorbed in the experience, but not enough to not note that Eris and Heero were having a rather serious-looking conversation.

_I look at the cross,  
then I look away.  
Give you the gun-  
blow me away._

When it looked like Duo was fully concentrated on the ever-so-flexible Harley, Eris and Heero turned to look at each other. He almost smiled again, but stopped himself. She noticed the twitch in his lips and smirked. However, she knew Heero didn't show up there for fun. It was, after all, the middle of his work day, and Heero never came to the club anymore now that she wasn't dancing—somewhere in the back of her mind, she was laughing and calling him a lecher. However, logic said this impromptu work visit was about business. "So what's up?" she asked discreetly, with minimum lip movement just in case Duo was a talented lip-reader.

"Ragnarok," Heero replied, just as quiet.

Eris shook her head slowly, her hair sliding forwards and shielding her face for a moment until she pushed it back behind her ears again. "I can't talk about that, Heero. You know that."

"I respected that when you said they were harmless."

"They _are_ harmless," she insisted, "For the most part. I told you what they were up to. It's small-time shit."

"If it was just small-time shit they wouldn't be on the radar," he countered, hiding his mouth behind his soda glass. Her lilac eyes grew uncertain. "Is there something you're not telling me, Eris?"

"No. Not that I know of," she trailed into silence for a long beat, "Really, Heero, it's…it's just a bunch of people who are pissed off. They're the type of people who're going to be unhappy no matter who's in charge."

"Like you?" Heero rejoined in a careful tone of voice.

Eris frowned and refused to answer. When she finally spoke again, it was swift and her voice warned him that he'd better not try to force the issue. "Look, Yuy, I can only tell you what I know. Maybe…maybe I can do some digging for you, but don't hold your breath or anything, okay?"

He nodded, more than satisfied with that. She sighed through her nose and stood up, turning to head back to the bar. Impulsively, Heero grabbed her wrist. Eris reacted instinctively, twisting in the hold until her fingers were poised to place a rather painful nerve pinch on his wrist. When she realized what she was doing, she stopped with a sheepish look on her face. She shrugged apologetically and leaned down to Heero's mouth when he lightly tugged on her arm.

"Come over tonight?" he asked, whispering in her ear.

Eris drew back long enough to eye him speculatively. "Will your friend be there?"

"No. Hotel."

"Then yes." She floated away then with a smile and the man at the bar, who actually appeared to be the bouncer, relieved her post gratefully. Eris found later on that she was wiping the bar down in time to the music, anticipation humming in her blood. The effect that Heero Yuy could have on her was rather alarming in its intensity, and she thanked whatever higher power there may be that he appeared not to know it and didn't mind at all when she insisted on keeping her distance from the enigmatic man whom had tripped and fallen into her life like only a gift-wrapped present from fate can.

_I watched a change in you.  
It's like you never had wings.  
Now you feel so alive.  
I've watched you change,  
and you feel alive.  
You feel alive._

_You feel alive.  
I've watched you change._

_It's like you never had wings…_

_You change…_

_You change…_

_You change…_

_I'm over._

_

* * *

_

TBC…


	3. Part Three

Project Echo

Part Three

Author: Lily Zen

* * *

Notes: So what do you guys think so far? Yea? Nay? I know I'm getting some hits, but so far nobody's said anything. There's some lime in this chapter. A quick note about anarchy… As it's mentioned several times in this story.

Anarchy is defined as a utopian society where individuals enjoy complete freedom characterized by the absence of government. I'm not an anarchist, nor is Eris. She thinks that even though she would prefer to be completely free, she can recognize the logical need for some sort of control in society—rules. Eris believes in a slightly different concept called discordia or discordia concors (harmonious discord), which is defined as harmony or unity gained by combining disparate or conflicting elements. To apply this term to the story, it means that she believes in acknowledging and appreciating both the chaotic and organized elements of the world. If you are curious about the concept of discordia, I would recommend to you reading the Principia Discordia, which can be found online. It's not particularly enlightening, as it was written mostly as a joke, but there are some interesting tidbits which can be found in there.

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing's not mine. Dollhouse concepts aren't mine. The chapter's song is "Give" by Tori Amos, which is also not mine.

* * *

_So you heard I crossed over the line.  
Do I have regrets?  
Well, not yet._

_There are some…some who give blood.  
I give love.  
I give…_

They met almost three years ago.

Eris was a dancer at Caged Exotics then, and had been a member of the group Ragnarok, a bunch of anarchists (though she called it Discordia, insisting that there was a difference between the two). That had been during the alarming Operation: Happy Heero where his friends and co-workers had decided Heero Needed A Life and made it their mission to see that he got one. Some of the guys from work—thankfully, Chang had not partaken in the ordeal, as Heero truly had no idea how Wufei would cope with being among women of such loose moral caliber-had taken him to Caged Exotics. Eris, of course, made him as a cop that first night, while she was giving him a lap dance no less. Embarrassing having a girl grinding on your erection while she bubbled with laughter in his ear—"_What brings the Five-O way out here? Is justice a lonely bedfellow?"_

He'd gone back to see her a few times, finding himself reluctantly captivated by the blonde dancer, and she had graciously entertained him each and every time, unalarmed by his stoic nature. Later on she had approached Heero during the holiday season with a rather disturbing tip about a small unit of rogue Ragnarok members that were hatching a bomb plot to be executed during the New Year's Eve countdown. Since then she'd proven to be invaluable as a CI. Her connections to the seedy underworld through her job and her political allegiances led to her obtaining a lot of good intel.

Of course, Heero wasn't foolish enough to think that she told him everything that was going on. Eris had a flexible sense of right and wrong, and seemed to be able to turn her own morality off if it suited her. She would think nothing of doing harm to someone who did harm to others. In a way, her sense of justice was closer to Wufei's than Heero's, though she didn't have Wufei's honorable ethics impinging on her decisions. Because of that, she was sometimes cruel.

And yet…

And yet somehow, Eris and Heero had bonded. It wasn't like what he shared with the other pilots. Heero had never looked at Duo and wanted to have sex with him before. To say that would be unsettling would be an understatement. But there was something about Eris that reminded him of himself and his friends, an edge that had been honed through years of hard living that put him at ease.

Eris made him feel comfortable in a way other women hadn't. She looked fragile, but Heero knew that there was strength hidden under her enticing curves. That and she didn't pressure him like others had. In fact, she seemed to want a committed 'relationship' less than he did. Thus they had enjoyed each other sexually for two years, and though they had other lovers during that time, they still tended to orbit back to one another. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement, in more ways than one. Eris fed him information and in exchange, Heero kept her slice of the underworld as honest as it got, and in their spare time, they warmed each other's beds.

So it was surprising when she hesitated outside of his front door that evening. Normally, Eris was quite fond of spending time with Heero, despite him being a physical representation of the Peace that Vice Foreign Minister Darlian was always going on about on television and the radio, and what amounted to an officer of the law. When he was with her, Heero seemed to forget about those things. She saw glimpses of the kind-hearted man underneath his steely exterior and the warrior who had found his way through many battles, and Eris quite liked them both. But that night she hesitated, caught in a brief moment of fight or flight that came on the heels of the realization that Heero was going to try to probe her more about Ragnarok. Up until that point, he had merely accepted her words at face value, but…

She resolved to play dumb if he brought it up and rang the doorbell with a little more force than necessary, demurely tucking an elaborate parasol under her left arm. The parasol was more than a charming affectation, though most didn't know it. Eris let them think she was merely an eccentric. However, underneath the stylish black lace trim and ribbons, the parasol was made of water-repellent fabric, and had an unbelievably tough handle, the bottom of which did not curve but ended in an elaborate metal grip with a silver skull at the end of it. When pulled, a sword similar to a katana was revealed. Eris was an expert at many different martial arts, but she preferred the safety of such a weapon considering who some of her acquaintances were and where she worked. Besides, it was virtually impossible to carry a gun around those days unless you were with the police.

Okay, so a gothic parasol wasn't exactly inconspicuous, so Eris dressed the part to make it blend better. Besides, she was charming enough that if she set off metal detectors, people simply assumed it was her parasol, and having it had come in handy more than once.

When Heero opened the door, she was fingering that metal handle, wondering what was taking so long. Her mind quickly deduced that he had been in the shower thanks to his wet hair and his only half-zipped jeans. Eris ghosted inside, lips quirked, suddenly remembering why she liked Heero's company so much. She wanted to press her lips against his chest and lick off the water droplets beading down it from his wet hair. Wondering if he would be amenable to that, she placed her parasol in the umbrella stand, and stood staring expectantly, hands clasped.

"Hello," she whispered, and it was almost shy sounding.

Heero's dark eyebrows lifted in curiosity at this oddity in behavior. "Hi."

Moving slowly, so as not to startle him, Eris placed her hands on his hips, invading the ex-pilot's personal space. She was smiling to herself as she watched her hands trace his abdominal muscles, and up higher, making a pathway to his neck. Heero shivered under the gentle touch, and when Eris leaned down to lick away the water on his collarbone, exhaled in a rough sound that might have been a sigh if he'd been a woman. "It's good to see you," she commented, nibbling at his neck and under his jaw.

"You too," Heero replied, voice sounding slightly strangled. His hands, which had come to rest of their own volition on her more rounded hips, flexed involuntarily. She reached his lips, soft as a butterfly wing, just sort of fluttering over him. Heero was the one who parted his lips further and pressed her harder against him. She liked that—feeling the strength in his hands as he tried to ignite her lust. It didn't take much effort usually, but the day had been a long one and there were other necessities she needed to see to first.

Pulling away with a gasp, Eris stepped out of the embrace with a firm shove. "I hope you went shopping this week," she began teasingly, "'Cause I'm starving. I missed lunch." Heero sighed and shook his head, watching her as she bent to unzip those tall vinyl boots. She wore black thigh highs underneath them, which she also peeled off, standing first on one leg then the other like a heron.

"You're here to torture me," Heero bemoaned quietly as he led the way into his kitchen, "I just want to get laid, and you're here being a tease."

"Dude, I gotta eat," she replied calmly, sounding much like his American friend, Duo, and hopping on the counter to sit. Her legs splayed wide, and Heero was momentarily transfixed by the sight. "Heero, please," she finally stated, "I can't do anything unless you feed me first. I might start eating you otherwise." That snapped him out of it, and he obligingly rummaged through the admittedly spare contents of his refrigerator.

Eventually, he came up with two eggs, an English muffin, and leftover Empress Chicken from the nearby Chinese take-out restaurant, which had been his dinner earlier. He held up his meager offerings with a question in his eyes and made a mental note to go shopping tomorrow. Eris laughed and stated, "The Chinese is fine. Thanks."

"You're welcome," Heero replied as he turned his back on the girl sprawled on his kitchen counter—which surely wasn't all that sanitary, but Heero found that he didn't particularly care—and put the entire container in the microwave for a minute. He handed Eris a pair of chopsticks and watched discreetly as she adeptly picked food out of the paper box and hurriedly chewed and swallowed, making some sort of happy noise as she did so.

While she was eating, Heero powered up his laptop and cracked open a beer. After a moment of thought, he also opened one for Eris and set it on the counter next to her. She nodded her thanks, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk around a mouth full of food. Heero didn't drink much and he didn't drink often, but he did enjoy the bitter taste of beer once in awhile. Mostly, he kept it to offer his few guests something.

They kept each other's company in silence until Eris began to fill up. "So what are you working on?" she asked lightly, not really expecting an answer.

"Confidential." That was as good as not getting an answer to Eris.

"Cool. I broke up a fight today," she laughed, "They were short-staffed at the club 'cause one of the bouncers called in sick. Of course, that's the day some asshole decides he's gonna get rowdy, right? Long story short, the dancer's okay, the other guy's a little bruised, and the asshole was carted away with a warning to never come back."

Heero smiled and one his thick eyebrows raised up. "Carted away? Is he going to be filing assault charges on you?"

Eris snorted and slid off the counter to dump the container in the garbage can. She waltzed over to Heero, putting a little swing in her step as she noticed his eyes following her. Most people would describe his eyes as cold, but there were nuances Eris had learned to pick up on over the years. Right at the moment, she could see hunger reflected there in the carefully controlled depths of his icy eyes. It was a distant thing, like lightning seen miles away, but it was there. She didn't stop until she'd slipped between the stools at the breakfast counter, so close it would only take a deep breath to brush her breasts against his arm. "Not if he knows what's good for him," she finally replied, reaching out and shutting Heero's laptop without looking at the screen. She didn't really care what went on in Preventer Land. If it had something to do with her, she liked to think that Heero would warn her beforehand.

Heero didn't flinch at the sound of his laptop shutting, nor did he look away from Eris' violet eyes when he pulled her closer. Her right knee perched on the chair between his legs, her other leg anchored to the ground steadily. There was a challenge in her eyes as they kissed with their eyes open. It was an intense moment, staring at each other from such a close distance while their tongues tangled. Then Eris let her eyelids drift closed, hands tangling in his thick hair. Subconsciously, Heero found that he was shifting his crotch against her knee. His zipper pressed against him uncomfortably, a harsh counterpoint to the sensuality of their lips gliding over each other.

He wanted her closer and so he broke their kiss to make that happen. With a strength that belied his frame, Heero wrapped his arms underneath Eris' derriere and hoisted her onto his lap. The counter top dug into her back if she leaned too far away from him, so she cuddled closer, wiggling a little bit on his hardening length, enjoying the feel of it between her legs and up against the curvature of her ass. "Feeling a little pent-up, Heero?" she asked cheekily.

Refusing to rise to the bait, he simply said, "yes," and took her mouth again. His fingers worked the laces of her corset without looking at them, untying the bow, loosening the ribbon—finally growing frustrated and pulling the ribbon out of their rings entirely. The corset fell between their bodies with a crinkly plastic sound, and Eris spared a moment to glare at him before she tossed it aside. "Really, Heero, you know it's a pain to re-lace them." He smiled, a dark, pleased little grin, and kissed under her ear where he knew she was sensitive, working the column of flesh until she had forgotten her ire.

"Bedroom?" he suggested in a low growl, and she shivered as she felt the vibration of it in her throat and chest. She wanted to make some nonchalant reply, but knew her voice would come out too shaky to make it work. Finally, all she said was, "Okay," in a breathy voice, sliding off his lap and heading towards the room in question. Heero walked quietly, but she felt his presence hot on her heels as she entered the bedroom and crawled onto the bed—no headboard or footboard, just a box spring and mattress on a frame, blankets made up with military precision—in a sensual move learned from one of the sluttier girls in her head, possibly Jemma.

Her eyes locked with Heero's again as he stood at the side of the bed, watching her. It seemed to be a hobby of his. So she began slowly easing up her tank top, shifting up onto her knees to give him a better view as her torso stretched up.

Defined abs that still managed to be feminine was revealed first, and Eris traced a finger around her belly button, making her own breath catch. Then the bottom of her black bra with its lacy details, and the creamy swells of her breasts cresting over them were shown. The paleness of her skin was accentuated with all that lack of color, and she almost found herself wishing that she could tan. However, that had never worked with her—she had always burned red, peeled, and then gone back to that perfect milk color. 'Almost' because she saw that in Heero's eyes, she didn't need to be tan. She was quite beautiful already.

_What a good man I have._

The thought was an idle one. Heero wasn't really hers by any stretch of the imagination, but it was true—he was a good man. Perhaps what she meant was 'what a good man I have here?' Oh well. She tossed her shirt off the bed and found Heero crawling onto the bed himself in a movement that was almost feline in grace. He reached out and cupped her breasts through her bra, making her inhale quickly as his fingers unerringly found her nipples through the material and teased them. Another moment later and the sensation was made into a memory by the scrap of fabric being flung across the room. The tiny metal eyelets made a scraping noise as they slid down the closet door to the carpet.

"I hope you didn't scratch the wood," Eris commented.

Heero looked up with his tongue idly tracing circles around a puckered pink nipple. He pulled back just far enough to say, "I'll fix it later."

That was the last thing either one of them said, conversationally, for quite some time.

_Soon before the sun…  
before the sun begins to rise,  
I know that I… I must give,  
so that I… I can live._

_There are some… some whose "give"  
twists itself to take-they mis-take.  
Who? What…what made up the line?  
Some say it was pain,  
or was it shame?_

After that fateful day back in 195, Eris had found her way to the Republic of Northern Europe, which included Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and the countries that used to be known as Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Now, as a province of the Republic, they were known collectively as Litovia. The people of the Republic were generally light and fair, so Eris thought this was a good place to blend in.

The first six months or so were difficult. No matter how much knowledge one had on a subject, it was always entirely different to be immersed in it. Eris struggled to provide the necessities for herself in a war-torn country where people were wary of strangers. Many of the locals existed in a constant state of paranoia, worried about ex-Alliance, OZ, and the Gundams, not to mention the rebel groups that seemed to be constantly cropping up. Despite her fluency in the local language—Eris was fluent in all the major world languages; thanks doc—and the creation of a new identity as Eris Nilsen (and the paperwork to prove such an identity), she was still having difficulty making ends meet.

Then she met Siegfried Jorgensen, a man nearly twenty years her senior who had the devastation of having seen too many wars written all over his face. It was a cold winter, and Eris was looking for some place warm to crash for the night. Her fingers were stiff in the pockets of her parka as she walked down the back streets. Eventually she found an old loading dock in the industrial meat packing district. The building looked like it had been abandoned for quite some time. Everything was locked down, graffitied on; everything except the second to last loading dock. The lock was broken.

Eris opened the heavy sliding door, pushing it up off the ground high enough that she could wiggle in. She almost stopped when she realized she could hear the low murmur of men's voices, but tiredness got the better of her and said that she could hide somewhere that they would never find her. Judging by the fact that the heat and lights were off, they weren't supposed to be here either.

She shut the heavy door as quietly as she could and ran upstairs onto the second floor, scurrying about like a little rat. Clearly the second floor was where the offices had been located. There was a concrete platform overlooking the first floor operation, and a room with Plexiglas windows. From her vantage point on the platform, Eris could see low fires burning in barrels, a small gathering of twenty or so people, and a man standing in front of them, speaking in a loud, charismatic voice.

"Do you know what I have learned throughout these years?" he was saying. Eris crouched down low, listening curiously while she picked the lock on the office door. "I have learned that order brings chaos, and chaos brings order. They are two sides of the same coin. I have watched my family die for high ideals like peace and unity, and yet chaos still thrives. They are beasts that feed on the insecurities of humanity, and yet they also feed into them. There is a beauty in that; in the push and pull, the drive to succeed and the depression of failure.

"This endless struggle has shown human kind at its most base. Is it ugly? Yes, most assuredly, but even the most ugly of things can be loved. I have never been so alive as I am now, thriving in the chaos, swimming through the primordial muck and mire with all of you. My brothers and sisters of spirit, if this be Ragnarok, then let us welcome it with open hearts and fighting hands. That would be as our Viking ancestors would have done! We will not die quietly as though we are children huddling in the dark! We will die with swords in our hands and peace in our hearts knowing that this is what it means to be human! Do not fear the sounds of battle! Be in awe of them, because it reflects who we are at our core."

It wasn't so much what he said as how he said it that made Eris stop what she was doing and stare. He was filled with such passionate conviction that she just had to see who this man was, this man who had chosen to idolize their discordant world rather than bow down to the sorrow it had inflicted upon them. Her mind catalogued his features: thirties, blonde, broad shouldered, deep-set wrinkles around mouth and eyes, goatee. That wasn't what she was really interested in though.

She shook her head when she realized that what she wanted to do was speak with him. That was not a tactically sound plan though, and so she slipped inside the office as the meeting began to break up. Unbeknownst to her, Siegfried looked up at the movement of the door. He spoke with his friends for some time and then made polite excuses to escape so that he might check it out without alarming the rest of the group.

Eris heard movement on the stairs, so she huddled deeper into the office, crouched down behind a filing cabinet, back against the wall. The hilt of the dead guard's sword dug into her neck, the sheath was a solid line of comfort down her spine, underneath the parka where she'd shanghaied a holster for it. The weapon was hidden from prying eyes by her bulky coat and her long blonde hair. A gun that she'd taken off of a different guard—not the .45, but rather her preferred 9mm—made its presence known by the way the top of the belt holster dug into her stomach. She'd cut a hole in her left pocket for an unobtrusive draw. As the doorknob began to turn, Eris already had her hand on the grip.

"Come into the room," she ordered with her gun pointed right at the man's head, "Close the door quietly. Don't try anything funny."

Siegfried did so without argument and then kept his hands up near his sides, palms out. "I'm not here to harm you," he said slowly, "Unless you're here to harm me?"

"I don't even know who you are," Eris scoffed, "Don't be so conceited."

"If there's no ill will here between the two of us, then you should lower your weapon as an act of good faith," Siegfried said, his low but somehow clear voice very steady. There was a note there that spoke of cajoling, which made Eris all the more defensive.

"Why? Is all your talk of the joy in chaos just words? Have I stripped away all your bravado with the barrel of my gun?" She sneered derisively and something perverse in her made her flick the safety off and cock the gun—a totally unnecessary action. There was something about hearing a gun being cocked that struck fear into men though, and there was something—someone—in Eris that loved the thought of that.

"Not at all," Siegfried replied matter of factly, "But you have an unfair advantage, already having had your gun drawn. I could make a move towards my weapon, but you would shoot me before I ever got near it. If we are to battle, I would at least like to have a chance. However, since that is not the case, it would be unwise of me to challenge you. Young lady, you have the advantage here. Would you kill an unarmed man?"

Lilac eyes narrowed in suspicion, she weighed the truth of his words, the honesty of his body language, and the sincerity in his steady brown eyes. She didn't trust him yet, but she didn't feel that his death was necessary and she would be at a tactical disadvantage with the group of people just down the stairs being witnesses. She would have to slaughter them all, and even Eris would have a tricky time taking down twenty assailants at once. The gun disappeared into her pocket and slid into the holster easily. She flicked the safety back on, but kept her hand resting lightly on the grip. "…I don't think the Vikings would approve," she drawled slowly as the tension in the room began to drop.

Siegfried slowly lowered his hands. "My name is Siegfried Jorgensen," he introduced himself, "I would wager money on it that you're in a tough spot right now. So are we, but we have some food. You are welcome to share with us. No pressure, no strings."

Eris looked wary, but her stomach had clenched at the word 'food' and seemed unlikely to let up. Finally, she shrugged and began walking towards the man. "If I think you're jerking my chain," she warned coolly, "I have no compunction about killing you."

"I'll keep that in mind," Siegfried responded with equal coolness and perhaps a touch of dry humor, as he gave her his back and walked through the door. She spent several nights there, sharing meals with Ragnarok and sleeping in the office (with the door barricaded—she didn't trust those fuckers as far as she could throw them) before she was approached about doing a favor for Siegfried. For a fee, of course. Then another, and another, and soon they were her friends and she was one of them.

Strangely, she had been with them ever since. Oh, not always in Oslo. About a year after the war ended, Siegfried had approached Eris about moving to Luxembourg and keeping an eye on Francois Benecait, the man who had come to Oslo to learn about Ragnarok's ideals. He had then asked Siegfried for permission to use the name for his group in Luxembourg, similar to a business franchise. Siegfried had said he was free to do so as he himself had no claim to ownership over the word.

"It is not that I don't trust him," Siegfried hedged one night as the two of them stoked a fire in the brick fireplace of the cabin Siegfried lived in and shared a jug of cheap wine, "But…"

"I understand," Eris cut him off, "Ragnarok's ideology was forged in the fires of war. It is easy to misinterpret discordia as anarchy. Should this man do so, and should he act on it while the world is still recovering its balance, you would feel responsible." She took a healthy swallow of wine and passed the jug back to her friend, then leaned forwards, drawing her knees to her chest and linking her arms around them. Eris had a good job then working at a member-owned restaurant as a bartender and server, so her clothes were nicer than in the war. That night she wore skintight jeans and a black fleece hoodie over a tank top. Her heavy black boots sat by the door, and a red wool coat hung on the coat rack. It was a far cry from her ragged parka and threadbare pants.

A part of her was sad to leave that steadiness, that comfort behind. It was the safest she had felt as far as she could remember. There was something nice about going to work five days a week, getting paid every two, not having to worry about where your next meal would come from or how long your clothes would last you. Still, those were all just things. Eris could admit to herself that though she could function in this time of peace that part of her was anxious, greedy even, for battle, for action. Something to make the adrenaline pump through her veins in a heady rush and leave her feeling more satisfied than sex ever could (or maybe it was simply too different a type of satisfaction).

"Yes," Siegfried admitted after a pause, "I would feel responsible."

She lifted her eyes to his then and smiled with genuine affection. "Then I will move to Luxembourg and be your eyes and ears in this other Ragnarok. I did not meet Benecait while he was here, so there will be no reason for him to suspect me." It showed in his steady brown eyes that Siegfried was grateful for her acquiescence, and her friend's happiness was like a small, personal victory for her.

_Soon before the sun…  
before the sun begins to rise,  
I know that I… I must give,  
so that I… I can live._

_Some… some who give blood.  
I give love. _

_I give…_

Benecait was no Siegfried.

Siegfried was, for the most part, a good man, an honest man with his own personal set of morals and ethics, his own philosophy on life. It had been developed as a reaction to years of hardship and heartbreak, and had served him and the people of Oslo well. It suited Eris too—most of it, anyway; after listening to Siegfried speak so often, she had formed her own thoughts on what exactly Discordia was.

Benecait did not have as many qualms as Siegfried did.

Siegfried talked of respecting the balance between chaos and order.

Benecait liked to tip it.

Francois Benecait owned the club where Eris worked. She had approached her assignment in Luxembourg like any sane person would approach an undercover operation: she had used his business as an in. Eris fit in well in the gothic scene. She had the pale skin and hair to fit in, and her eyes made her a hot commodity. The people who came to watch the strippers at Caged Exotics wanted something just so; they wanted to see exotics.

Eris didn't mind being looked at or touched. It was nothing worse than what OZ had made her do. She had little sense of the degradation some of the girls seemed to feel towards having sex for money, and though she did not receive a feeling of validation like still some of the others, she did not mind it. The sex was simply an act to further her cover within the Luxembourg Ragnarok.

It took time until Benecait trusted her, but eventually he let her into the fold. However, nothing Benecait did ever alarmed Eris to the point that she saw him as a threat. He had been a gangster and a pimp before the war, had been conscripted into OZ and forced to fight during the war, and had merely emerged more jaded than before. Ragnarok had given him an outlet for his anger and now he ran his cell as tightly as he had once run his gang. However, Eris had no problems with authoritarian rule; she had been raised in the military. Aside from some petty larceny, minor possession charges, and a few questionable business deals, Benecait seemed rather legit nowadays. Okay, okay, so he still pimped out his girls, who the fuck cares?

It wasn't so much Benecait that was the problem; it was his followers. Sometimes when Eris caught wind of some young upstart planning to show the world what Ragnarok meant, or at least what they perceived as Ragnarok's mission, she tipped off Heero about it if the threat was serious enough. Those required more trained back-up and man-power than Eris was capable of mustering in her current situation. Besides, she had no authority to punish such offenders and believed that they were better off left to rot in the penal system. Then other times there were ones that she could take care of quietly.

Occasionally, Benecait would ask a favor of her, and those she could not decline due to the sake of her cover. For instance, Benecait's old accountant had tried to steal from him, and when the French immigrant found out, he asked Eris to question him as to the whereabouts of the stolen goods. Benecait had discovered quite by accident that Eris had excellent people skills and the cool detachment to make an incredible interrogator. The man held out longer than Eris would have liked, eventually forcing her to use brutality to secure the information. A distant part of her had felt sorry for cutting off his pinky; another part howled in joy.

However, Eris still wasn't Benecait's most trusted. There were plenty of secrets that she might not be privy to. Siegfried was worried. His sources were saying things about a Preventer infiltrating the Oslo group. That wasn't so huge a problem. Siegfried and the Oslo Ragnarok had nothing to hide. An undercover agent might spook some of the members, but Siegfried could at least work around it. Heero was asking questions—definitely not a good sign, which meant that somewhere someone related to Ragnarok was being very, very bad. The only way to maintain the balance between these parts of her life was to go deeper into the Luxembourg branch. To do that, she might have to make some compromises on the ideals she had agreed to when she was with Siegfried, and she might have to do things that Heero would definitely not approve of…

But if there was something going on, she needed to know what it was and then determine if she should interfere.

Eris rolled over in the bed and one of her legs fell out from underneath the covers. Heero slept on, lying on his back with his hands resting on his chest. She knew his eyes were flicking underneath his closed eyelids, his subconscious mind busy analyzing the sounds and movements, determining if they were a threat. Eventually he would relax again and then she would slide the rest of the way out of the bed, wait a few more minutes, and collect her clothes from the floor. After that, the blonde woman would pause at the door, check to make sure he was still sound asleep, and leave the room. She dressed in the hallway because the sound of her buckles and zippers were often enough to startle Heero awake.

Then she would leave in her used compact car—sure, they could make flying mobile suits, but had they bothered to make a flying car yet?—and go home to her tiny apartment, locking the door to Heero's house behind her. She had once asked why such a paranoid man didn't have a home alarm, to which he had responded, "Someone who is determined enough will know how to bypass such a simplistic system. Besides, I like to think I am deterrent enough against attackers."

Eris had laughed and ruffled his hair, saying, "You _are_ one scary motherfucker."

The look on his face had been well worth it, and just to make up for his indignance, Eris placed a soft, wet kiss on his mouth, pulling away with a gentle nip. From underneath half-lidded eyes, she saw Heero's lips twitch in a smile that was boyishly charming, and then he had kissed her again and managed to convince her to spend the night—a rare occasion indeed.

_Soon before the sun…  
before the sun begins to rise,  
I know that I… I must give,  
so that I… I can live._

_

* * *

_

TBC…


	4. Part Four

Project Echo

Part Four

Author: Lily Zen

Notes: I apologize in advance if you think I am writing Duo as a bit crude, but I think if Gundam Wing were the real world and not a cartoon, he would be. I mean, let's keep in mind that the guy grew up in a pretty dangerous environment. He's also a guy. He is also trying to get under Heero's skin. Oh, and I'm sorry if I psyched you out last chapter with that whole 'fade to black' love scene. I thought I was going to write it, and then I realized that it wasn't really necessary to the story, so I skipped it.

Finally, a note about Shar-Peis. Everyone tends to think of them as these really wrinkly dogs with all this extra skin. I think most would be surprised to know that Americans bred the dogs that way. We call these dogs Chinese Shar-Peis, when in fact they are not really Chinese at all. They are the Americanized version of the magnificent dogs native to China. I actually was on a website once where Shar-Pei owners from China stated they were disgusted by the bastardized version of their dogs sold over here. You see, in China, Shar-Peis are not very lumpy at all. Oh, they have some wrinkles, more similar in style to the other bully breeds, but not the ridiculous amount they've been bred to have over here—naturally, their bodies are quite sleek looking. Occasionally, you can find a Shar-Pei here in the states who was lucky enough to inherit the now-recessive trait, but that is not the norm here. It's so bad that you have to pull their wrinkles apart and clean them out, otherwise they can get horrible infections. Shar-Peis are wonderful dogs, but for health reasons, I would never get one here in the States. I would go to China and get a real Shar-Pei. So, to wrap all this up, in the story, the dog Blue is a Shar-Pei not a Chinese Shar-Pei. I shall never refer to him as a Chinese Shar-Pei, but I may call him a Shar-Pei from China if I feel the need to denote the country of origin. Also, I apologize if you have a Chinese Shar-Pei and are heartily offended by what I just said. These are just my personal opinions. I love Shar Peis—they have great personalities and a lot of awesome traits, I just hate the overly-excessive wrinkles.

Also, I am sorry about the massive author notes.

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing belongs to Sunrise and some other people. Dollhouse concepts belong to Wes Ramsey and some other people. The song belongs to Marilyn Manson and is "This Is The New Shit."

* * *

_Everything has been said before.  
There's nothing left to say anymore.  
When it's all the same  
you can ask for it by name._

_Babble babble bitch bitch,  
rebel rebel party party,  
sex sex sex and don't forget the "violence."  
Blah blah blah got your lovey-dovey sad-and-lonely.  
Stick your STUPID SLOGAN in.  
Everybody sing along._

Duo was smacking his gum on their way to Preventer HQ, and Heero found it rather annoying. Waking up alone and discovering that Eris had once more vanished without him being any the wiser was an automatic irritant. He was supposed to be some highly trained soldier, and a cute stripper—that would be the point where Eris pointed out the fact that she didn't strip anymore—should not be able to catch him unawares. Maybe he was losing his edge.

"So, buddy, you know I gotta ask," Duo finally broke the silence, "What's the deal with the hot blonde?"

Heero shrugged. He wasn't really prepared to ask questions about Eris. If he told Duo that she was his CI and it came out later on that he was sleeping with her, that would look unprofessional, but if he told Duo that she was his lover, that would be a lie. 'Lover' implied a certain level of commitment that they did not have. He didn't have the same problems Duo did with lying, but he tried not to do it to people that he respected.

"I only ask," his braided friend went on, "'Cause you two looked awfully chummy at the club—by the way, nice move getting the dancer to distract me—but I'm not sure if it was business or pleasure, if you catch my drift." The other man kicked his feet up on the dashboard, which made Heero scowl at him until he put them back down. "She was really pretty though. Man, the things I would do to that cute little mouth of hers; wouldn't blame you either if you were tapping that. Hell, I'd tap that all day, every day 'til my dick fell off."

Heero finally cracked, making a sharp, displeased sound. "That's enough. We were simply making plans to meet up later." It was not a lie.

"Oh?"

Duo's voice was too innocent, making Heero shift his gaze to his friend and then back to the road. He looked pleased with himself, like he was chasing down OZ back during the war. "That's cool," he finally said, "'Cept, you know Quatre, well…he and I have this bet going. It's an idle pool, really. He thinks you've got a thing for Relena. I say you don't. I guess what I'm getting at is…are you banging the stripper so you don't go banging the politician?"

At that, Heero couldn't help but to chuckle. "No," he responded, "I have no interest in Relena that way."

"But she likes you," Duo supplied, chewing his gum loudly again.

"Yes, I'm aware." His voice was very dry as he remembered the times Relena had tried to kiss him. "Relena is a very nice person. She is necessary for this world and its tenuous peace to function. However, I cannot will myself to feel anything more toward her than friendship. Please take note that after the Peace Summit three years ago, I requested to be assigned to Relena as little as possible."

Duo was snickering. "She freaked you out or something, Yuy?"

"Hn…'or something.' I am glad to say that she has moved on from her crush and found someone else." Then he went and shot it all to hell. He had gotten Duo to move on from the subject of Eris, so he didn't know why he brought her up again but he did. "Also, she's not a stripper. She's a bartender at a strip club."

Heero pulled into the parking garage, and Maxwell clutched at his chest in a poor imitation of having heart palpitations. "Are you picking up your shield and defending her? You brave, white knight." He was laughing uproariously even when Heero parked the car and turned to level a severe glare at him. "Okay, okay," he gasped between peals, "I'll drop it."

_Babble babble bitch bitch,  
rebel rebel party party,  
sex sex sex and don't forget the "violence."  
Blah blah blah got your lovey-dovey sad-and-lonely.  
Stick your STUPID SLOGAN in.  
Everybody sing along._

_Are you motherfuckers ready  
for the new shit?  
Stand up and admit  
tomorrow's never coming.  
This is the new shit.  
Stand up and admit._

_Do we get it? No.  
Do we want it? Yeah.  
This is the new shit.  
Stand up and admit._

Normally after working a day shift, which she did every Thursday, Eris stayed up through the night and slept the following morning before she had to work that night. It was the only way to get her internal clock back on track. However, she had slept for a little while at Heero's, thus screwing that all to hell. It was ten o' clock in the morning and instead of sleeping, she had already worked out, made breakfast, and bathed. Then she clipped on the dogs' leashes and took them for a walk, though as usual she ended up carrying Coal for about half the distance.

Coal had been her first dog. She had found her wandering the streets of Luxembourg shortly after she moved there. The little black Pug was a stray that haunted the alleys near her apartment. She caught glimpses of her sometimes, but had never approached. Then one day, she remembered seeing something odd, like a wound, on the little dog's hindquarters from a distance.

The next day Eris had returned with a hamburger, leaned against the back wall of the apartment building, and thrown bits of meat to the little dog down the alley. The following day she repeated the incident and the dog came a little closer. So on and so forth until the sixth day, when the little dog finally got close enough for Eris to see that the wound she had seen was a bad burn scar, probably from that incident with the Barton Foundation the previous year. She also had patches where her silky black fur seemed to have been singed off and had grown back in a slightly different way.

Still for a few days after that, Eris did not try to touch the dog and simply fed her until she was comfortable enough to eat from her hand. On the eighth day, she sat and petted the ugly dog while she ate. The Pug sat for a long time, her googley eyes half-closed in happiness. On the ninth, Eris picked her up and brought her inside, and on the tenth day, she took her to the vet. A little dog like that was not meant to be a stray.

It was a strange thing for her to do, but she didn't care. The little dog, who eventually came to be known as Coal, had been her loyal companion since.

Then over a year ago, Eris had seen Blue in the back room of the club. One of the dancers who worked there at the time, a delicate Asian woman who had never set foot on the continent named after some kind of plant. Ivy, Rose, Twig…whatever. She wasn't a particularly pleasant woman, so Eris had never gone out of her way to interact with her. Anyway, one of their shifts, Eris heard a strange snuffling sound from the woman's dressing table, and went over to inspect. She found a little padded pet carrier with a bow on it and a puppy inside.

"You want it?" she heard over her shoulder.

Eris turned to face the mostly nude woman. Twig shrugged. "Some customer brought it as a present. You know how some get…"

The blonde woman made a gesture of understanding.

"Yeah, I guess he went on some trip to China and he saw this puppy and thought of me. 'Cause you know, I'm Asian, therefore I must be Chinese." Twig rolled her eyes, "Anyway, I'm just gonna take it to a shelter tomorrow morning. I can't stand dogs. So if you want it, you can have it. Saves me a trip."

Eris eyed the little gray ball in the carrier. He had wrinkles on his forehead and he smelled her through the grate, his little nose twitching with the effort. She didn't really want another dog. Coal had been an anomaly, but this one would be deliberate. The puppy's tongue darted out and licked her finger. She smiled at the odd sensation. At the end of her shift, she found herself walking out with the carrier, having had no idea just how much work puppies took.

But Blue, the handsome Shar-Pei, had proven to be a good companion for Coal. Though Coal was older and had less energy, she approached Blue with a maternal air, even though the vet said that Coal had probably been spayed before she ever went into her first heat cycle, and Blue was patient and gentle with the smaller dog, knowing when to play and when to leave the older dog alone. He listened well, never made messes (anymore), and was an early warning system when people were approaching the apartment door.

The rest of the day was spent in silence and contemplation. The only sound was a slight thud as a tennis ball hit the exterior wall over and over. Eris and Blue often played that game. She would throw the ball onto the floor, which would then ricochet up and off the wall, coming back towards her. Either the blonde would catch it or Blue would. If Blue did, he would then trot back over to her, drop the slightly wet ball in her lap, and they would begin again. Eventually Blue would tire and go lay on his blanket and chew his dog bone until he fell asleep.

They were in the middle of the game when she heard ringing from the bedroom. Eris had a disposable cell phone that she kept at the apartment. It was always charged. Only Siegfried had the number. She was never sure if Benecait had the inclination or the resources to check her incoming calls, so to maintain her identity within the Luxembourg chapter she had always kept the cell active.

Popping up from the floor, she jogged into the bedroom to pick it up off the computer desk. "Hallo?" She sat down on the bed next to Coal, who was curled up in a ball at the foot of the bed, sleeping. The old girl raised her head to eye the human and settled back down with a little snuffle. Eris began to rub behind the dog's silky little ears and over the wrinkly skull.

"Hei, Eris. How are you?" The sound of her friend's voice was like an ice pack being applied to her fiery, jangling nerves. Eris was a restless creature torn between bouts of high energy and conflicting emotions. Siegfried and his constancy was comforting in the midst of her ever-fluctuating state.

She debated trying to hide her answer, and eyed the dog on the bed who was slowly shifting closer to her. Coal's calm brown eyes reminded her of Siegfried's and seemed to implore her to simply be honest. "Could be better. You?"

"Always good. Why so glum?"

"…I've received a tip that there may be something going on in Ragnarok that I'm not aware of." Coal made one last large movement and ended up in Eris' lap. The two of them made good companions. They were both dependent on each other, but only reluctantly or with a great show at pretending not to be. Blue didn't have those qualms and as he trotted in the room with his curly tail wiggling over his behind, he signified as much. He was a simpler creature. When his pack was together, he wanted to be a part of that. The gray-blue dog climbed up on the bed, turned in a circle twice and then flopped down with a sigh next to Eris, practically right in Coal's vacated spot.

Siegfriend's voice was suddenly cautious. "You're sure?"

"No. I'll need to get in deeper with Francois to be sure. I've heard no whispers of it thus far." The dogs were quiet except for Coal's wheezing breath and little snores.

"Slightly alarming," Siegfried hedged, "The fact that you've not heard anything would seem to indicate a certain level of organization, yes?"

"Indeed."

"It has you worried."

Eris' dry laugh escaped her, and she said, "Not as much as you might think. Perhaps humans are growing a bit lazy in their approach toward peace. Perhaps a little chaos is just what they need to shock them out of simply paying lip-service to their ideals. I am, after all, dreadfully bored. A battle would certainly invigorate _me_."

"You don't mean that."

"No?" she questioned, her voice light and airy, "Then what do I mean?" Blue became alert, his ears perked, and he shoved his nose into Eris' palm. She petted him absently.

Siegfried was silent, sensing that Eris was in a delicate state of mind, and knowing in that way men often do in regards to their women when it was best to keep their counsel to themselves. Eris took a moment to calm herself, taking deep, even breaths in and out of her nose, closing her eyes to concentrate on clearing her mind of its many opinions to focus on her own, or at least those she had come to think of as her own. Finally, she began in a carefully controlled voice, "I believe that I am undecided on this current issue. First I must discover what, if anything, is going on under my nose. Then I will pass judgment. That would be the wisest course of action."

"You are correct." Siegfried's voice drew the words out like a confectioner pulling taffy, "Will you keep me informed?"

"Yes," Eris told him, "I must go now. Goodbye." It wasn't so much that she needed to go as she needed to get off the phone. The conversation was making her agitated, though she didn't know why yet. It would require further self-examination.

"Goodbye, Eris. Take care of yourself."

She hung up the phone then without another word, deposited Coal on the bed next to Blue, and got up to return the phone to its spot on the desk right next to the coffee cup with writing utensils in it. Uncertainty was disconcerting to her. Clearly, for the benefit of her own mental health, she needed to investigate Ragnarok further.

_Babble babble bitch bitch,  
rebel rebel party party,  
sex sex sex and don't forget the "violence."  
Blah blah blah got your lovey-dovey sad-and-lonely.  
Stick your STUPID SLOGAN in.  
Everybody sing along._

Eris got to the club at eight o' clock for her long shift. She had on one of her outfits that was designated for the club. A black, cropped shirt with a hood on it paired with a black mini-skirt and studded belt, and the cherry on top of her fuck-me sundae: a pair of knee-high boots in black leather that laced all the way up the front. The o-rings were all silver, which complemented the thin silver chains that dangled loosely from the top of the platform boots to the bottom. They were awesome and a little scary. She tucked her parasol behind the bar after she clocked in.

The bartender who was scheduled to leave then was named Kira and she tucked a chunk of short blue hair behind her ear as she sidled up to Eris and began whispering in her ear. The place was in full swing that night, so they had to be pretty close to be heard. "The boss wants to see you upstairs," Kira whisper-yelled, "I'll cover for you."

Eris nodded her thanks and headed up the back staircase two at time, keeping a loose grip on her parasol. The stairway was utilitarian and her boots echoed loudly on the metal stairs. The scrape as she transitioned onto the concrete floor of the upstairs was jarring in the silence. She kept moving, despite the odd feeling that she was starting to get in her gut. She needed an excuse to get closer to Benecait and this might provide it. Casting aside her unease as useless, she knocked politely on the door labeled 'Management Only.'

It swung open just a crack, enough to reveal a sliver of a face she knew to be quite ugly and a squinted eye. "What?"

"It's Eris. Francois wanted to see me, Ben. What's wrong with your eye?" she asked, noticing that it was red and watery looking.

Ben, Francois' bodyguard, swung the door open and let her in. The sound of it being locked after she entered put a subtle tension between her shoulder blades. "Bastard tried to poke it out. Can't see real good now," Ben grumbled in a bass so low it was almost painful. Unable to resist, Eris turned to face him under the guise of carefully examining his eye. She couldn't stand having him at her back like that. "You should cover it for a day or so. Use ice packs intermittently to bring the swelling down."

Ben rolled his hulking muscular shoulders in his tight black t-shirt, and the sight made Eris uneasy again, just thinking about how much the guy probably benched. Ben kept his hair cut military-short, which went well with his intimidating, bull-like face. He had a gun in a shoulder holster, which was one more reason for Eris to be uncomfortable. She was already at a disadvantage if she had to fight Ben. Adding a gun to the mix was just plain unfair. "Whatever," he gruffed.

The bodyguard led the way across the room, skirting around her as Eris watched him uneasily. He opened a door on the other side of the room, so Eris knew immediately what was going to happen. Benecait only used that room when he was questioning someone, or punishing them. The thing was completely soundproofed.

Feeling a bit more confident, she entered the room and was greeted with the sight of a rather grimy looking man tied to a chair in the middle of the room. He was bleeding from two of his nail beds and there was a pair of pliers on the table next to Benecait. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on. Ben stepped into the room behind her, an alarming presence to have at her back, which made her sidle further into the room, faking a casual strut. "What the problem, boss?" she quipped, leaning back against a wall where she had a vantage point of all the occupants in the room, propping a booted foot up against it in an aggressive pose.

Francois Benecait was handsome in a smooth, arrogant way. He had aristocratic features that reminded Eris of the pictures she'd seen of Treize Kushrenada and dark brown hair kept short on the sides and a little longer on top. There was a slight wave to it, which made it look inviting to female fingers. His hazel eyes seemed to suit his personality. They changed their color to more green or more brown depending on what he wore. Fitting, since his personality was both as fickle and as flexible.

He could be an extremely charming, handsome businessman one minute and be holding you down by the throat the next with a look in his eye that said he'd enjoy killing you.

Eris could relate to that.

So when he looked up from the table and she saw that look in his eye, she didn't quail. Her eyes didn't dart away. Violet met hazel and held, a brief battle of wills in which neither participant seemed inclined to lose. Then Benecait made a decision. He smiled and tipped his chin just so, and Eris knew that he had stepped back from whatever inner precipice he stood on. Not because he liked her, but because she was still useful to him. Again, this was something Eris could understand and did not take personally.

"This little fuck-nugget," Eris stifled a mental snigger at the term, "Has been doctoring my orders on L2. I want to know why and what, exactly, he's been altering. I wouldn't have even noticed it if I hadn't been looking over all the financials. What a piece of shit." He sneered and sent a brutal kick to the other man's knee. The man on the chair cried out, but Eris didn't hear anything break and he stayed conscious. Good. "Will you work your magic on him?" Francois asked with a vicious little purr in his words.

Eris shrugged and used her propped up foot to propel her away from the wall. She took three lengthy steps forward and grabbed the man by his hair, forcing him to look up at her. Studying him carefully, Eris finally nodded. "I can do that."

Benecait grinned with something like glee in his eyes and licked his thin lips. "Good. I'll be in my office." The fact that he would be watching on his security monitor went unsaid. He liked to watch Eris work. Sick, little voyeur.

_Everything has been said before.  
There's nothing left to say anymore.  
When it's all the same  
you can ask for it by name.  
Are you motherfuckers ready  
for the new shit?  
Stand up and admit  
tomorrow's never coming.  
This is the new shit.  
Stand up and admit.  
Do we get it? No.  
Do we want it? Yeah.  
This is the new shit.  
Stand up and admit._

_And now it's "you know who."  
I got the "you know what."  
I stick it "you know where."  
You know why, you don't care.  
And now it's "you know who."  
I got the "you know what."  
I stick it "you know where."  
You know why, you don't care._

Today was proving to be a good day, Eris noted as she dragged a chair over from the far side of the room and perched on it. She had picked up a sharpening stone from the side table where Benecait had kept his torture tools and without a word, she with drew the sword from her parasol and began sharpening it on her lap.

Aside from that brief moment where she had met the captive's eyes, she had not acknowledged him. At least until she looked up from her work, found his curious and slightly fearful gaze on her, and kept her stare locked on him as she sharpened her katana without looking at it. Eris almost smiled to see his fear growing but that would spoil the rapport she was trying to build. Flicking her oculars down to the weapon, she eyed the edge discriminately and went back to sharpening. "What's your name?" she asked suddenly, her tone cool and stern.

"…F-f-f-frankie."

"Frankie? Really? Is that short for something? Franklin, maybe?" The scrape of the sword was off-putting to the captive, especially in such a room filled with tools for extracting information.

"Y-yeah, but only—" he paused to gulp uncertainly, "Only my ma calls me that."

"So, Franklin, what's your family name?" She wanted to get as much information out of him as she could and the more she got him talking about innocuous things, the more likely he would break without the usage of physical tactics.

"Brom." His eyes were tracking the movements of the stone over the blade almost as if he was mesmerized.

"Franklin Brom," Eris murmured, testing the name and storing it away in her memory. "Where are you from, Franklin Brom?" At that, the man balked, reluctant to give away such information. Eris went on as though she hadn't noticed. "I'm from Earth, though I've lived so many places, it's hard to call one 'home.' I've even spent time up on the colonies. I like space; it's so stark, so beautiful, and yet utterly deadly. One wrong move and snap, you're dead. Say, do you know how the recycling and weather control works up there? I've always been curious."

She was looking at him again, and his mouth was working, wondering what her game was probably. Then again, it couldn't hurt. What did he care if she wanted to know what they did with all their waste? "It's a little different depending on who made the colony, but on L2 everything gets recycled. Waste is used to make manure to help the grass and the crops. The weather system's connected to the water recycling too, though it goes through a process first to adjust the pH levels. We try to keep everything as close as we can to the natural human environment." He was starting to lose some of his fear—this girl, whomever she was, seemed fairly nice, and the adrenaline was draining out of his body, leaving his muscles feeling stiff and his fingers throbbing in agony. He stifled a whimper.

Eris fought a wicked little smirk back and instead said, "So you're an L2 native? I've been there before."

Frankie looked up, startled, and realized that he had ended up giving away vital information. Damn. He vowed he was going to keep his mouth shut after this. Blondie was a sneakier bitch than he'd thought. Putting down the whet stone, she shot to her feet and flicked her sword so that it was right under his nose, blade up. "What do you think?" she asked, "Does it look sharp enough to you?" Frankie looked up, not daring to move lest he cut himself. His breath was fogging up the blade and disappearing with each inhale. "For what?" he asked carefully and watched as a terrifying smile lit up the woman's face. In lieu of answering, she lightly ran a finger down the edge of the sword. It didn't even looked like she'd touched it except when she lifted her finger there was a thin cut with oxygenated blood seeping out of it.

Eris licked the blood off and sucked on the wound for a bit, waiting until it began to clot. "Yeah, it's sharp enough," she murmured to herself and sat back down, scooting a little closer like they were old school chums. Leaning forward, she asked, "Where do you work on the colony?" Her voice was deliberately light and easy-going. "Some place Benecait owns?" Frankie jumped when he felt something trail up his leg and realized it was the flat of the katana. He watched as it slid up his leg, circling his knee and began going up the inside of his thigh. "Frankie," she poked him in the groin lightly with the tip, "I asked you a question." Her voice sounded just the littlest bit cross.

"Y-yeah," he stuttered, feeling an overwhelming sense of relief when the weapon backed off and began a slow descent. The sensation wasn't any harsher than a caress, and if he looked away, he could almost pretend it wasn't a deadly sharp blade touching him. Then the cold look in his eyes reminded him that she wouldn't care if she cut off every single part of his body. It was a strange combination of lust and terror that chased around his thoughts. "I work for…" the tip of the blade pressed against the inside seam of his jeans, "I work for a shipping company he owns. Simulacrum."

"What do you ship there?" she asked idly, and let the katana trace the shape of his calf an instant before catching the opening of his pant leg on the tip. Eris let him feel the sharpened edge against his skin for a moment and then with a controlled motion, cut a three inch slice right next to the inseam. His yelp of surprise and fear made Eris grin and she fell a little further into the dark corner of her mind where the very bad person lived.

His thoughts slithered over her mind like oil, thick and floating just on the surface. She could push it back if she chose to, but…Eris chose not to. In a way, having him there took some of the pressure, the responsibility off of her. She could do the very bad things and feel nothing.

Frankie was babbling incoherently, listing off items. "…whatever Benecait tells us to! Pasties, clothes, glasses, booze. Sometimes there's stuff like guns, drugs, machine parts-"

"Machine parts? What kind?" Eris stood up and began walking behind the man, though her gait was no longer quite as femininely enticing. The sociopath in her head was present, and he had a very direct walk, though he could still be very quiet. There was a moment of confusion where Eris had to rectify his mind and the image of their shared body—that of a man's—with her own to find the balance necessary to walk in her shoes. It happened in a microsecond. Her sword trailed around the contours of Frankie's upper body almost lazily, using the flat of it to stroke more of his skin.

"The usual, y'know, nuts, bolts, gears, hydraulics—" Frankie was growing increasingly more panicked as he watched the girl seemingly become a different person.

"Why did you doctor the orders?" The cold metal touched the back of his bare neck and he cried out and flinched away as much as he could.

"I was told to! Please, don't hurt me…" He began crying when he felt the edge just barely touch his neck. Blood seeped out in a thin line and trailed into the collar of his shirt. Eris was enjoying herself immensely. His terror was like a buffet and she kept going back for plate after plate. "By whom?" The questioning at this point was almost unimportant in comparison to this.

"Vic Lleuven! My boss! He told me to!" Frankie whimpered when Eris touched the back of her neck, even though it was with her hand and not the sword. Deft fingers located the pressure point and just rested there. "And what was it he was smuggling in?" As she asked, her fingers depressed the skin there, sending a live-wire of pain shooting through the man's back. "Ow!" As recompense for such a spineless cry of pain, she pressed the tip of the sword into the palm of one of his bound hands, letting it sink a little deeper than she should have. He let out a squeal worthy of the stool-pigeon he was.

"Frankie?" Eris sing-songed, "Answer me…"

"I don't know," he begged. Disgusted, her arm flew and a four inch cut appeared on his arm a moment later. "Please! I don't know! I don't know, I don't know, _Idon'tknow_!" The smell of urine reached her nose a moment after that and her violet eyes went heavenward as though to say 'why me?' "I can't tell you what it was! I only know where it went! Vic sent it to…to some address in the manufacturing district on L2!"

The sociopath wanted to cut him again, to make him scream and weep, to punish him for his weaknesses. Eris was forced to rein him in and wrestle him back down into his little hideaway in her head. She didn't need him for this. She knew what to do. Leaning close, she growled in his ear, "What address?"

"I don't remember! But it's in the records at Simulacrum! Vic can't touch 'em." Sensing that she had gotten all she could, Eris pressed a swift kiss to the man's cheek and smiled. "Thank you. There, was that so hard?" Then she walked over to the side table, took a moment to clean and sheathe her katana, and left the room to give her report to Benecait, mentally composing which details she would include and those she would leave out.

_Babble babble bitch bitch,  
rebel rebel party party,  
sex sex sex and don't forget the "violence."  
Blah blah blah got your lovey-dovey sad-and-lonely.  
Stick your STUPID SLOGAN in.  
Everybody sing along._

Benecait was nodding slowly, a pleased smile on his face due to what he was hearing and what he'd just witnessed. Nobody did it quite like Eris, in his opinion. Nobody. Frankie Brom had pissed himself and she'd barely even touched him. There was something in her that Francois had liked from the moment he'd laid eyes on her, something that whispered 'this girl has no limits.'

And as far as Francois had seen, Eris Nilsen really didn't have any limits. He'd never been so pleased with a hire before. She would go anywhere, do anything, as long as the price was right. He admired a woman like that, because it was so like himself.

She finished speaking and he found himself eyeing her lustily. Watching her never failed to get him all riled up. "Finish him off," he ordered her, already licking his lips in anticipation.

"Pardon?" At that, Eris actually looked shocked, and Francois felt himself shrug. "No," she said and he was surprised at her refusal, "Why?"

"I can't send him back, and I can't risk him going to the authorities on our little tête-à-tête. I have to kill him. I'd like to watch you do it." He had never made it a point to conceal the fact that he was intrigued by Eris a secret. She seemed to get off on turning him down, but he knew eventually he'd find the price that would bring her to his bed, or his desk, or the floor of his office. He could be flexible regarding location.

"No," she repeated, a little frown between her eyes.

"No? Alright, then I'll just send Ben in there. He's bored. You've been hogging all the action tonight," Francois smiled like a snake, "I'm sure he'll want to make up for it. Take his time." The threat was unspoken. Eris had shown her humanitarian side to him by refusing to do as he asked, and he was twisting that ruthlessly by insinuating that he would have the craggy-faced Ben torture Frankie just for fun.

A sudden strong dislike flared up in her, but Eris knew she was trapped. Frankie could die fast by her hand or die slowly at Ben's. Either way he was going to die.

Eris' eyes flicked to the security monitor where she knew he'd been watching. Her frown was so deep, it was almost startling. "I don't particularly care if he lives or dies," she stated, "But I'm not going to get caught on camera. That would be foolish of me. Turn it off, erase the footage, and I'll do it."

Francois was smiling as he rose up from the desk, not bothering to hide the fact that he was aroused. He came around the edge and stood in the girl's personal space, gently touching her chin so that she'd look him in the eye. "How will I watch you then?" Eris frowned like he was a moron for even asking such a question. She jerked her chin out of his grasp and towards the door to the adjoining room. "There's the door. Wouldn't it serve your fantasies better if you had not only the visuals, but the sound effects too?"

He realized that on this, she wouldn't budge, and so he conceded gracefully. "Oh, alright," he sighed heavily. Leaning over the desk, he turned the camera off and obligingly erased all the footage from their guest's stay. When he looked back with a raised eyebrow, Eris nodded satisfactorily. She strode through the door with Francois hot on her heels, though he simply closed the door behind them and leaned up against it. Ben's last sight of them was the tiny slip of a woman striding over to the torture tools on the side table and his boss adjusting his dick in his pants. The room was soundproofed, so once the door closed, he didn't hear the screams. It was a small mercy. Something about that woman chilled him when she went in that room, and he'd like to fall asleep next to his wife tonight without thinking about the look on Eris' face as she terrorized and killed.

In the room, Eris stood at the table, calmly analyzing what would be the best weapon for a fast, merciful death. She had already tipped her hand and shown her cards to Francois. There was no need for her to pretend that she would garner joy out of taking his life. No need whatsoever to draw out the performance any longer. In the end, she determined that the weapons were insufficient. They were chosen with torture in mind, not immediate death. She would use her hands for the task instead.

Benecait was leaning up against the door, a twisted, shit-eating grin upon his face. He palmed himself through his pants when he saw Eris' eyes on him, and in that moment she vowed that he would experience a painful death at her hands. Maybe not today, tomorrow, or the next day; but eventually he would die. He had crossed the line and Eris' special blend of justice had judged him and found him guilty of the charge of inhumanity.

She walked up behind Frankie, whose eyes followed her sadly, like he was already well aware of his fate. As he cringed and began to cry again, the blonde woman smoothed her hands on his shoulders in a gesture of comfort that couldn't even begin to touch his sadness. Her hands braced against his neck, one looping around in front to provide the pull, the other bracing along the same side to provide the push.

A horribly fast wrenching motion and a sickening crack later, Franklin Brom was dead, his head lolling lifelessly on a broken neck, and Francois was chuckling to himself.

Eris stayed for the rest of her shift, pushing down every little flare of horror and sadness and hate that tried to come up. She mixed and poured drinks on auto-pilot, flirted for tips, and fended off further advances. Except in the back of her mind, an endless scream was building up, dying to be let loose.

_Are you motherfuckers ready  
for the new shit?  
Stand up and admit  
tomorrow's never coming.  
This is the new shit.  
Stand up and admit.  
Do we get it? No.  
Do we want it? Yeah.  
This is the new shit.  
Stand up and admit._

Heero's cell phone was ringing. It was two thirty in the fucking morning. Who the fuck was calling?

Duo had left that afternoon on a flight to Oslo where he was going to meet his Ragnarok contact. He had seen his friend off at the airport and spent the rest of the day catching up on some of his other more tedious cases. Staring at a computer screen all day had left him tired, more so than when he performed the more physical field work with Chang.

He picked up the phone with a growl. "What?"

There was a moment of silence and then he heard a shaky breath. "…Heero?" The voice surprised him because it was Eris. That was unusual because normally they planned their liaisons ahead of time. However, adding to that was the strange note in her voice. The lightness, the shakiness…those were not typical for her.

"Eris, what's wrong?" He blurted out before he had even come to the conclusion to voice his thoughts.

There was another pregnant pause and then that subdued version of her voice broke through it. "Can I come over?"

Heero nodded and then realized that she wouldn't be able to discern that over the phone. "Yes. When will you be here?"

"Is ten minutes okay?"

"See you then," he responded in lieu of another monosyllabic answer.

"Okay. See you." Eris hung up the phone then and Heero climbed out of bed, pulling on a pair of sweatpants and worrying over the strangeness of her phone call. It was almost like…like she'd been scared or sad. Unthinkingly, he moved to peek out of his living room windows, widening the horizontal blinds just enough to see the yard, street, and a sliver of the sleepy neighborhood. He identified the knot in his chest as anxiousness and realized it would remain until she showed up on his doorstep hopefully unharmed.

_So…  
Let us entertain you,_

_let us entertain you...  
blah blah blah blah_

_everybody sing along._

_

* * *

_

TBC…


	5. Part Four Point Five

Project Echo

Part Four and a Half

By: Lily Zen

Notes: You can skip this scene if you want to. It's not really relevant to the story. It's just Heero and Eris having sex, although there are some interesting parts to it. I've been reading up on different techniques in tantric sex (don't ask me why) and so there's a lot of my research in there.

Warning: There a little bit of anal in here. Just a little. Really. Like not even a pinch.

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing's not mine. Dollhouse isn't mine. The song is "Cut" by Plumb.

* * *

_I'm not a stranger.  
No, I am yours.  
With crippled anger  
and tears that still drip sore._

_A fragile frame aged  
with misery,  
and when our eyes meet  
I know you'll see._

Heero watched her pull up in the driveway. When she got out, he noted that she was still wearing her work clothes and she didn't pull her parasol out of the car. As she walked up to the door, she hit the alarm button on her keys and the lights on her car flashed to indicate it was locked. Pulling open the door when she was a mere foot away, he had the privilege of seeing Eris in a rare distraught state. She didn't say anything, not hello, not what was obviously bothering her, she just pushed him inside the house and kicked the door closed with her booted foot.

Pressing him up against the wall, Eris laid her mouth on his and launched an invasion that thoroughly distracted him from whatever it was he was going to say—maybe 'are you okay?' or 'what's wrong?' Her kiss was a brutal thing that night and he wondered what had occurred to put that edge of desperation in her. She kissed him like he was oxygen and she was asphyxiating. Hands that were normally fairly gentle touched him with force and he realized that he was clinging to her, hands on her bare lower back. Imagine the great Heero Yuy, Perfect Soldier, forced into submission by the power of a kiss.

When she drew back for air, Heero decided he'd had enough of his passivity, and he grabbed her underneath that tiny little skirt and lifted until she was cradled up in his arms, legs wrapped around his waist. The smirk on her face was amused and anguished all at once. Seeming to want a distraction from whatever was going on inside her own head, Eris' arms tightened around his neck and forced his mouth on hers once again.

He started moving and so they kept the kisses light and shallow, neither one of them desiring to have a tongue bitten off. Eris loved trailing her lips down his surprisingly delicate jaw line. Once, she would have thought that a man like Heero Yuy—former Gundam pilot, child soldier, dedicated Preventer—would have a jaw like granite. She'd admitted as much when they were in bed some time ago that she thought it almost incongruous. When he'd admitted that is was more of an Asian thing than something that was done on purpose, that slightly rounded jaw, she'd said she understood and revealed that she had mild albinism, thus the reason for her coloring.

Eris was always careful not to talk too much about her past, which Heero had noticed but respected. After all, he didn't like to talk about the war or his childhood, and she never pushed that either. They understood without words that some things were just better left alone. But that rare instance where she had confided such a thing to him and even made a joke about using sunscreen that was SPF albino had meant something. What, he wasn't sure, but he knew it meant something. The fact that she was here in his arms while in such a mental state meant something too. Heero almost thought he should confide in Duo and ask his friend for his thoughts on the matter, then he remembered that he'd rather remove his own kidney than talk about such personal matters.

She was worrying his earlobe with her teeth. It was a sensitive area for him, one that Eris manipulated gleefully. He propped her up on the back of the couch and yanked her head back with a fistful of long blonde hair, smashed his mouth atop hers with avengeance. Time for a little payback. His fingers deftly undid the spiked leather cuff around her wrist without sight and dropped it on the couch, then he broke the kiss long enough to rip off her cropped sweater.

Heero's mouth went lower than her mouth that time, kissing and sucking and biting at the skin of her neck and chest until her breath heaved in her lungs and she was moaning aloud. She'd have some marks in the morning, but she didn't mind the thought of that just then. Despite the roughness of his mouth, his hands were gentle as they held her in place, keeping her from squirming too much and falling backwards onto the couch cushions. The contrast made her feel frantic, wanting Heero to lose just as much control as she was.

His name fell from her lips in a low, breathy plea, and he obliged, hitching her up again and making his way down the hallway to his room.

_I do not want to be afraid.  
I do not want to die inside just to breathe in.  
I'm tired of feeling so numb.  
Relief exists-I find it when  
I am cut._

His bedroom was dark except for the little light shining in through the blinds. The dim glow on his mussed bed sheets seemed to be an invitation to her. Heero deposited her on them and she landed with a little whumph. Wordlessly, he took her left leg in his grasp and searched for a zipper to get her ridiculous shoes off. The sound of the teeth catching and releasing on each other seemed loud to her ears.

The boot was tossed to the wayside, revealing the knee-high socks she'd worn that day. They were black, of course, with little skulls with pink bows embroidered on them. Heero rolled it down carefully, making sure to caress her bare skin as it became revealed. His calloused hands touching her so carefully in a place no one else really had made her eyes flutter in the back of her head, back arching against the mattress. He kissed the top of her bare foot, which made her flinch a little and giggle—she hadn't really known she was ticklish there—and traced the slight indentation where the top of the sock had clung to her skin. Then Heero repeated the process on the other leg with all the diligence he had the first.

The earlier desperation that had dominated their encounter in the living room seemed to have dissipated or at least rescinded enough to not dominate the room any longer. A spell seemed to have been cast by the moonlight and the quiet house and Heero's soothing hands. A deep well of calm began to take over Eris, the many voices in her seeming to quiet as they all united in this one purpose: seeking pleasure. Propping herself up on the bed using her arms, she drew Heero closer to her by hooking her legs around his thighs and using enough pressure that he got the hint.

He leaned over her, placing a hand on the mattress for balance, and kissed her long and slow and deep until she sighed with the languorous pleasure of it. Shifting, she balanced only on one hand, using the other to feel the muscles working in his neck and jaw, then drifting down in a caress over his pectorals and stomach, loving the way his muscles flexed as she passed over them.

When they were both breathing hard through their noses to prolong the fusion of mouths, Heero drew back enough to unbuckle her belt and drop it on the floor next to him. Immediately afterward, he flicked open the top button of her skirt, pulled the zipper down, and paused with his fingers grasping the top of the skirt. His eyes met hers with a silent question in them and she raised her hips helpfully in response. The piece of fabric was pulled off slowly and when Eris realized she'd have to let go of Heero with her legs to remove it fully, she raised them straight up in an effortless stretch, supporting her weight on her upper back and shoulders.

Heero found himself questioning again idly just where exactly Eris had obtained her physical skill set. There was so much control in that one movement alone that it suggested intense training in some sort of discipline. He slid the skirt up over her knees and past her feet, leaving it to lay forgotten with her belt on the ground. She was left in nothing but her underwear then, and it should have made her look vulnerable but her muscle definition and that aura she subconsciously projected made it anything but. Her legs came to rest on his shoulder and she smiled at him, crooking a finger in an invitation.

But Heero had ideas of his own. Instead he tugged gently on her right ankle and swung her leg over to his other shoulder. His hands ran down her legs, enjoying the smoothness and the feel of her long, lean muscles shifting underneath the skin, as he knelt on the bed. The position forced her body to curve, testing her flexibility as her knees came close to her chest. There was a question on the tip of her tongue, perhaps something like 'what the hell, Yuy,' but before it could come tripping out, Heero grabbed her dainty thong and wrenched so hard he snapped the strings on the side. She cried out at the violence of the movement and looked at him crossly, a complaint in her eyes. Heero didn't care.

Perhaps sensing that need, that vulnerability in Eris in some place he seldom acknowledged, he was going to take his time with her. With her thighs on either side of his head, he darted in close and placed a gentle kiss just above her slit on her smooth pubis. Eris gasped and then settled, quelling the nervousness she began to inexplicably feel. It was just so vulnerable a position, and…and…

But Heero was doing marvelous things with his mouth down there, nibbling her labia and flattening his tongue to lick her from one end of her slit to the other. She was throbbing and felt feverish all over, tiny pants and moans coming from her without any conscious thought. She'd try to hold them back and then her lover would change what he was doing just the slightest bit and it would start all over again. He knew her and what would drive her to the edge fastest. Heels dug into his back as he wiggled a hand into the tight space he'd made for himself—his face was warm and her musky smell filled his nostrils and all he could hear were the sounds he drove from her with excruciating pleasure—and sank a finger into her tight channel.

She felt herself climbing higher, the nexus of ecstasy growing and tightening in her lower abdomen. Heero was rubbing unerringly at that spot inside of her that made her lose all sense and reason, licking and suckling her clitoris. Her hands were clutching frantically at the bed, unable to find purchase anywhere else. His name became a litany in her mind as she reached the zenith of bliss. Her final cry was louder than all the others and hoarse as she came, her limbs trembling, euphoria snaking out to every nerve ending in her body.

_I may seem crazy  
or painfully shy,  
and these scars wouldn't be so hidden  
if you would just look me in the eye.  
I feel alone here and cold here,  
though I don't want to die.  
But the only anesthetic that makes me feel anything kills inside._

_I do not want to be afraid.  
I do not want to die inside just to breathe in.  
I'm tired of feeling so numb.  
Relief exists-I find it when  
I am cut.  
Pain…  
I am not alone.  
I am not alone._

Heero gently uncurled her limbs from around him and moved so that he was propped up on his side next to her, his fingers tracing aimless patterns on her twitching muscles. When she recovered her breath, it was only to let out a little laugh and reach for him eagerly once more. He would have offered to go rinse his mouth before they began again, but she kissed him before he could do so. Hands moving over his skin, finding the spots that made him move closer to her by memory and touch, Eris began to divest him of his sweatpants.

Her mouth trailed down his sternum, leaving a trail of saliva that cooled on his skin in the wake of her downward movement. With an efficient series of tugs, Eris yanked his pants off with only minor assistance on his part. Hands firmly kneading the muscles on his back and buttocks, she indicated with a slight movement that she'd like him on his back. Heero obliged and watched as she curved over him, kneeling on the bed next to him, and took his member in her mouth. He recognized the sensation, the tension of her as she worked her lips down his length, taking it further and further into her throat. There was a moment where he felt lips at the very base of his erection, touching the sensitive skin there, and he fought the instinct to buck his hips. Choking her was the last thing he wanted to do.

Then back up she came, his dick a little shiny with saliva, the tip of it still in her mouth as she swallowed and breathed out slowly to avoid coughing. Heero shivered as the cool air danced over his cock. Eris noticed, of course, and he felt her lips quirk around him as she began a slow siege on his sanity that consisted of licking and sucking and the delirious gratification of her hand stroking the remaining length she would no longer swallow.

They were careful with the deep throating now after the time that Eris had done it one too many times in a row and almost threw up when her throat clenched, frantically trying to expel the invader. Later on, she had complained of extreme soreness, and from that point on they were both very cautious regarding that.

Removing herself, she teased just his slit with the tip of her tongue, licking off the proof of his arousal with satisfaction. When his chest started to move up and down in a faster rhythm, Eris used her hand to massage his sac, making Heero release a groan that didn't sound like himself to his own ears, and then she reached beyond, stimulating the perineum. With a firm touch, she pressed something inside of him, something that made his eyes squeeze shut, lightning snapping across his lids. A startled sound escaped him. When she did it again, his back arched, hips thrusting himself further into her mouth.

He could feel himself building up to the precipice, and told her as much. Eris pulled back bearing a wicked grin, still tugging his penis in her hand almost lazily. "Want to try something new?" she asked, reaching behind herself with the hand not clasping his engorged cock to undo her bra strapless bra one-handed and fling it off into the dark room.

"What?" Heero growled, even though at that moment all he wanted to do was come all over her in a hot, sticky mess.

"Did you know that orgasm and ejaculation are two different processes? That it's possible for a man to have an orgasm without ejaculating, thus enabling him to have multiple orgasms."

"…full of shit," he panted, hips moving restlessly.

Her hand tightened, twisting over the head, and he watched in rapt fascination. "No way," Eris said, "Not me." Fingers trailed over his sharp hip bones, dipping into the narrow vee. "If you squeeze your PC muscle right after you start your orgasm—that's when you start having contractions at the base here…" She rubbed the base of his penis, "You can actually have a dry orgasm." Eris nibbled on her lower lip and gave him a smile that was equal parts aroused, adventurous, and teasing. "Wanna try?"

Heero was rather suspicious of this whole thing. It still sounded like a crock of shit, as Duo would say. "I just squeeze my muscles?" His voice was incredibly dry as he spoke, but Eris just nodded rather cheerfully. "Yeah, squeeze and hold 'til the feeling backs down. That's the theory anyway. I don't know how it works in practice. You're the first guy I've wanted to try it out with. I think you could do it though. You've got excellent muscle control."

"Whatever…" he shrugged and knew he'd give it a shot—Eris was feeling playful, a vast improvement over her earlier mood, and frankly he wanted it to stay that way. The worst that would happen was that he was going to come in a sticky mess all over her (not a terrible outcome) and they'd have to wait until he recovered to do anything more.

Eris bounced on her knees a little, celebrating his surrender, and returned her mouth to him in earnest. It was a moment later that her hand resumed what it had been doing between his legs and that exquisite feeling returned. He hadn't realized it was possible to stimulate the prostate gland externally, but that was the only explanation he could think of for the so-good-it-almost-hurts flooding him in waves.

Closer…

Closer…

And then he squeezed Eris' hip hard enough to leave a bruise—dimly realizing that she had stopped all stimuli—at the same time that he followed her instructions. He held the muscle contracted while rapture rocketed through him, threatening to dislodge his concentration. He could feel the urge to come, and just barely managed to beat it back. Then it retreated and he opened his eyes which had apparently been screwed shut very tightly as it took awhile to regain his vision to find Eris gazing at him curiously. A small trickle of fluid had run down his length, which was still hard, but nothing compared to the usual amount.

The only thing Heero could think to say was, "where did you learn that?" He sounded slightly accusatory that she hadn't shared this insider knowledge sooner. Laughter bubbled out of her. "A book. I'll bring it over next time. You can borrow it."

Heero nodded in satisfaction and sat up to draw her closer to him so that she straddled his thighs. "Good," he said, and nudged up against her opening.

"Yeah?" The word was more a puff of air than anything else.

"Yeah," he groaned as she rocked her hips and he slipped inside her the barest inch. She sank onto him slowly, drawing out that first motion into an eternity, feeling the pull of her inner muscles and the veins sliding against her slick walls, savoring it like her favorite candy. Heero raised his arms with the intent to pull her down faster, but suddenly there was resistance there. Eris grasped his wrists and fought against the upward motion, trying to pin his hands back on the bed. He tried to push up with his arms harder, and she bore down even more, fighting him to a standstill.

Her muscles were trembling with the effort, but she was holding his hands in place mid-air. Heero was confident that if he applied more determination to the effort, he could break her hold, but a part of him was simply impressed. He'd known that Eris was strong, but he hadn't realized she was strong enough to rival him in any way. That implied…

His thoughts trailed off as Eris rolled her hips, sliding his length in and out of her. Letting loose an almost-moan, Heero allowed his wrists to be pinned next to his head, conceding that battle in favor of thrusting his own hips into the rhythm that Eris was beginning to establish. The movement was shallow due to the fact that she was stretched out over him, and she took the opportunity to nip at his lips and sink into a kiss, their tongues dueling for control.

Eris was making small animal noises which he swallowed eagerly, rocking her hips to a faster tempo. Heero recognized that her impatience was starting to get the better of her when she released her grip to prop herself up with hands on his chest. Rising up on her knees, she suddenly changed the angle of penetration and the quickness of the movement itself. Altering the position had made Heero surrender her mouth, but that was alright. He was far more interested in what was going on where their bodies joined, watching her ride him, breasts bouncing, hair a silvery-white cloud in the darkness, long enough that the ends tickled his skin.

"Oh, fuck," she groaned when Heero began to rub her clit in time to their increasingly frantic rhythm. The slap of skin on skin mixed with their harsh breathing. Eris leaned back a little, balancing herself on her palms next to his corded thighs, and began letting out a little grunt at the end of each thrust, chewing on her own lip. Heero could feel another orgasm building in him, could tell by the flush on Eris' face and chest and the noises she was making that she was close too.

He pinched her clitoris lightly, and it seemed that was just what she needed because suddenly she was clamped around him like a vice and coming with a shout of his name. While she was still trembling with aftershocks, Heero cradled her body like a ragdoll and rolled her underneath him. His movements were frantic and deep, and Eris held her legs as wide as possible for him. Her hands clutched at his ass, pulling him along with each flex of muscles, encouraging his roughness. Then her hand began to trail down—wet with something, he didn't know what or when that had happened—pushed a finger inside him as deep as it would go, stroking against the boundaries of that sacred inner cavity. The fireworks that burst behind his eyes that time were so much more intense, and Heero came with a shocked sound.

It seemed to last forever, pulsing and spasming until finally there was nothing left. He was propped up on shaking arms, wondering when the hell during all that she'd pulled her finger out—seriously, some warning would have been nice—and looking down at Eris' smug, smiling face. Two seconds later he collapsed on top of her with just enough forethought to angle his upper body so he didn't smother her, breathing heavily and luxuriating in the arousal rapidly leaving him.

_I'm not a stranger.  
No, I am yours.  
With crippled anger  
and tears that still drip sore._

They were lying side by side, Heero spooned up against Eris with an arm over her middle. She was breathing quietly, drifting some place between reality and dreams, content to stay where she was. The horror of the day had been eclipsed by Heero's love making.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked quietly, his voice indicating that he would listen if she spoke, but speaking was not obligatory.

Eris shrugged one shoulder, and then admitted quietly, "No."

"Okay," Heero replied and didn't push for more. He was content—a rarity—and felt sleep pulling at the edges of his consciousness. So with Eris tucked up against him, he decided to give into it.

The moonlight receded from the rumpled bed as it sank from the sky, leaving the two of them in the pitch black of night, uncaring that when the sun came the spell would be broken. Two soldiers with truck loads of secrets would withdraw into their protective shells, and they would go on just as they had before that unusual night together.

_But I do not want to be afraid.  
I do not want to die inside just to breathe in.  
I'm tired of feeling so numb.  
Relief exists-I found it when  
I was cut._

_

* * *

_

TBC…


End file.
